Episode 12: The Millennials, part 4
With chemistry, logistics, and one last chance for the world’s original Millennials, this is the story of building history’s most famous boat.
Quotes from the Bible were were taken from the English Standard Version (see ESV copyright here) or the New King James Version. For the other sources, including commentaries, websites, or articles, you can find links and references in the show notes below in the order they appeared. If you have any questions, there’s a place to contact me at the bottom of the page.
Show notes:
For a brief history of the Channel Tunnel (or “chunnel” as I learned it) see here. As far as the timeline of the Chunnel, the idea was revived sincerely in 1986 according to the first link, but there was lots of history there including plans in 1802 by Napoleon and a mile long start in 1880 that the developer abandoned as mentioned here.
For the story of the Three Gorges Dam in China, see here. The 12-year timeline doesn’t include the planning and debate (which went back to the 1920s) or building the construction access roads (that began in 1993) or the subsequent installation of generators and boat lifts (which finished in 2015). Even then, from the earliest actual work to the current state, it took only 22 years (1993 - 2015).
For the time it took to build cathedrals during the middle ages, see here for details on the building of Notre Dame, and here and here for the location of York and the building of the cathedral there.
In this episode, I use the terms “boat” and “ship” interchangeably. This might upset some people. Generally speaking a “boat” is smaller than a “ship,” or refers to a submarine (see here), or, according to this reference, is less than 40 feet long. According to one article the debate about the words goes back over a hundred years. For me, I use both “ship” and “boat” to refer to the Ark because I like variety.
For details on the size of the Ark compared to the Titanic see show notes on Episode 11, here.
We can’t say whether Noah did or didn’t have any boatbuilding experience, but even if he had some background, even the most expert shipwright, given the task of building the Ark, would probably do some research on how to build such a large ship before jumping right in.
God gave Noah the design of the Ark, but either the record we have in Genesis is just the overview, and God gave a lot more specifics than those few lines (which I think is likely) or God gave Noah the only parts he needed to know, and left out details that Noah was capable of figuring out for himself. In my estimation, there could be truth to both theories: God told Noah more than Genesis records, and Noah still had to figure out other less critical details for himself.
For the calculation that it was cheaper to haul grain across the Mediterranean from Egypt to Rome than it was to haul it 75 miles over land, see the second page of the article here, pg. 262 in the journal.
For a moment-by-moment list of the launch procedures of the Titanic when it descended the slipway, see here. For a more general description of slipway launches, see here on pgs. 161-163.
The ship sheds found in Piraeus are speculated to have housed the Athenian fleet that may have taken part in defending Greece from a Persian invasion around 480 BC. For more, see here, here, and here. For more on Piraeus, see here.
This source also gives some details of ship launching, including the addition of a side-launch, which is a more recent method than using a rear-launch slipway.
For issues and considerations when using a slipway to launch a ship, see pg. 287 here as well as pg. 162 here which I referenced earlier.
For the disastrous slipway launch of the SS Princessa Jolanda, see here and here. The images here make it clear that it was a stern-first launch.
For the definition of a dry dock and its use, see here and here. The second link emphasizes that lots of planning and experience are needed to properly slide a ship into the water.
For the use of a dry dock by the Egyptians around 200 BC, see here which describes the ship and it’s launch in detail. In the episode, I said the drydock was probably used for maintenance, because the first reference, above, says they launched the ship off of a framework of other smaller ships, and then floated it from the harbor into the newly dug canal with hull supports before draining the water out. Given this, perhaps the drydock wasn’t invented originally, but only later when they needed to do maintenance on the large vessel or remove it from the water for storage and it was too large to haul up a ramp into a slipshed like those mentioned above from Piraeus, but this is all my best guess based on Athenaeus’ description. For other information, you can read about triremes and larger ships, here, including the speculation that the very large ship of Ptolemy IV was a catamaran. For a timeline, also see here which lists the years Ptolemy IV Philopater reigned.
For the relative safety of deep water during a tsunami, see this document. I suppose it’s possible that Noah could have built the Ark near the sea, and then launched it into deep water to wait for the start of the Flood, but we have no evidence in Genesis that he wasn’t still on dry land when the Flood started.
The observation and argument that a hill-top building and launch site was best for the Ark comes from an Answers in Genesis article here. They also mention the likely risks of high velocity currents that the ship would experience if near the shoreline. Some support for the concept that the Ark was on top of a hill, perhaps the highest hill, might come from Genesis, depending on how you understand the 40 days and 40 nights of rain. Martin Luther thought that the Ark rested upon some plain for the first forty days before the water got high enough for it to float (see paragraph starting “For forty days the ark stood” here). That makes some sense. The water wasn’t immediately at its greatest depth on the first day of the Flood, for what would the additional 39 days of rain do, especially if the total depth was only 15 cubits higher than the highest mountain as mentioned by Genesis 7:20? Instead, the Flood may have been rising for some or all of that time, only floating the Ark free toward the end of the forty days when the water reached a great enough depth, but this is conjecture. It’s possible the Ark was built on a plain, floated fairly early, and God protected it from running into the surrounding hills, but using our best guesses about how we would do Noah’s job today suggests that building at the summit of one of the tallest if not the tallest hill in the pre-Flood world would bring the most security to the ship, even if it complicated the building process.
For specifics on the HMS Victory, see here. For the number of oak trees and the estimated forest area required for those trees, see here. Another source referenced 2,500 oak and elm trees as well as a significant amount of wood that was imported from elsewhere (see paragraph beginning “Designed by Thomas Slade” at this source.
For calculations on how much bigger the Ark was than the HMS Victory, see dimensions of Victory on pg. 7 here. That source doesn’t list the height of the ship, only the height of the hold. To get the height of the Victory, I used a drafted image from pg. 25 here and determined the height by using a proportion from the known length. For the size of the Ark, I used the conversion of cubits to feet for the dimensions of the Ark listed in a show note on the previous episode. Admittedly, using a proportion to calculate the amount of wood used in the Ark requires that the Ark and the Victory be of the same shape, hull thickness, and use similar internal members. In this case, I’d guess the Ark had a greater hull thickness and more substantial internal bulkheads (both in size and frequency) suggesting that this calculation could be conservative and the real total for the number of trees required to build the Ark was higher, especially if you include the wood needed for cranes, scaffolding, and other infrastructure. That said, one commentary pointed out that the construction of the Ark had a lot of things going for it. Creation wasn’t that far in the past so people were still strong and healthy and able to work hard and that nature itself probably produced wood and other resources more abundantly than it does today. If that was true, Noah probably didn’t need an extended supply chain to get the materials for the Ark. Instead, he may have been able to buy most supplies within a fairly local area. For a list of the benfits Noah had in building the ark, see the note on Genesis 6:15, here.
For the proportion of wood wasted in building a ship during the time period when the Victory was constructed, see pg. 380 here. Whether the waste was accounted for in the requirement of 2000 oak trees is unclear.
According to the second page of one source, wood fresh from being cut might contain 30-300% water. Ideally, you want to get that down to 15-20% before you use it. If you don’t it might split, warp, or shrink while you’re building with it. Furthermore, for boat-building, getting the wood to dry out before you use it helps with waterproofing because when those dry boards are put into the water, they swell and seal the gaps between one board and the next. The first page of that document also references the need for years of air-drying to properly prepare larger sections of wood, the same thing that was done for the wood eventually used in the HMS Victory according to the paragraph starting “Designed by Thomas Slade” here and again with the paragraph beginning “According to Chatham Dockyard’s records” at the same source where the completed hull was left to season for most of another year after it was put together. There are methods of working with fresh-cut wood. The wood for a log cabin is probably still wet when they put the building together, but in that case, the joints between logs aren’t nearly as critical as they can be packed with mud or moss to keep out the rain and wind. I did find a reference to the Venetians seasoning wood under water (see paragraph beginning “Besides showing off the Arsenal’s treasure troves” here). I don’t know if they were doing that to minimize rotting since the wood wasn’t exposed to air or because the boards were intended for below-the-waterline uses and would always be wet so keeping them in their swelled state was desirable. Even so, given the assumption that the Ark was built on a hill, and likely to sit out of the water for the better part of a century, dried wood was probably the better option, even if it did require lots of up-front inventory.
We don’t know if Noah hired help or not, but after 480 years of farming and other labor, he could, perhaps, have saved a considerable sum enabling him to hire assistants to help him build the Ark. As with most things here, whether he did or didn’t is speculation.
For the Venetian Arsenal as the best of manufacturing during the middle ages as well as a brief description of the assembly-line technique using a canal, see here. You get an idea of how deeply merchant-life ran in the Venetian population from pg. xxviii here. That book also gives the founding of the Arsenal as 1104 (see pg. 35), it talks of inventorying parts of a ship in kit form (see pg. 280), and the production of 10 ships in 6 hours this way (see pg. 281), as well as the quality control the Venetians instituted as well as the practice of holding craftsmen personally responsible for their work (see pgs. 278-279). For the building of a ship in just the time it took King Henry III to eat dinner, as well as other stories of how fast the Ventians assembled their ships, see pgs. 144-145 here as well as the paragraph starting “Besides showing off” here. For the Arsenal’s area of more than 60 acres, see that same source with the paragraph starting “Not all master craftsmen.” The Arsenal is famous enough in history, that the word, “arsenal” comes from Venetian, with no clear etymology further back according to pg. 96 here.
For Venice’s success being linked to the success of their ships, see here which notes that their wealth was founded on maritime trade. Also, see pg. 519 here states that the Venetians viewed the Arsenal as the source of their prosperity.
I didn’t reference Viking shipbuilding much in this episode, but if you want to read up on their methods, which involved a lot more splitting than sawing, see here.
For the year of Julius Caesar’s first invasion of Britain, see here. For the distance across the English channel at the narrowest point, see here. For damage to Caesar’s ships in the first raid on Britain, see here. For the construction of more ships for the second attack of Britain the following year, and the use of Caesar’s own requirements in their design, see here. For the second round of ship damage and repair, see here and here). Caesar’s ships were probably built to be light and, perhaps, somewhat disposable since he only needed them for this short trip across the channel. In contrast, the Ark had the opposite requirement. Furthermore, in both cases for the Romans, the ships were badly damaged while at anchorage or beached on the shores of Britain where they risked colliding with the ground or one another during a storm, the very situation Noah may have been trying to avoid by launching into deep water from the top of a hill. Given those details, perhaps Caesar’s ships were more reliable once they gained the open ocean. Even so, in the course of the Flood, the Ark risked similar peril, especially as the water was rising at the beginning and falling toward the end before the Ark ran aground, so the Ark had to survive similar circumstances shoreline-during-a-storm risks without failure and therefore needed to be sturdier than Caesar’s fleet. For more searchable text on the Gallic wars, see here.
One could argue that Noah didn’t need to be a perfectionist in building the Ark because God could miraculously patch any leaks to keep it afloat, but this goes against the context of the story. In order for Noah to save his family and the animals, God asked Noah to do all that Noah could do, He didn’t offer Noah a miracle, He offered Noah a job. If Noah could do the minimum, why didn’t he just use driftwood? Instead, the context suggests that Noah did as much as he could humanly do, an idea perhaps supported by Genesis 6:22 that Noah did “all that God commanded him.”
A couple of things favor the idea that Lamech (Noah’s dad) and Methuselah (Noah’s granddad) remained faithful to God. First, at Noah’s birth, Lamech made a statement suggesting faith in God’s promises, even though they were 1000 years old by that point (see the Genesis 5:29 and references in the show notes near the start of Episode 11. Second, as I talked about in Episode 9, Methuselah might be named in the genealogy of Genesis 5 not because he was Enoch’s oldest son, but because he was the one who was faithful to God and therefore stood in the line of faithful people going from Adam to Noah. If that’s the case, there’s every reason to think that Methuselah would’ve joined in the Ark building, even as old as he was. For one general suggestion that other descendants of Seth worked with Noah on building the Ark, see the note on Genesis 6:16, here.
References to God’s promise to save Noah along with Noah’s wife, sons, and daughters-in-law come from Genesis 6:17-18.
The Bible isn’t explicit about whether Noah had children other than Japheth, Shem, and Ham, and commentaries come down on both sides of the debate. We don’t know for sure, but there are a few reasons to lean toward the conclusion that Noah had just the three boys. The details are pretty long for a show note, but you can read about it in a WiderBible article here.
As far as name meanings go, Japheth could mean “wide spreading” according to Easton, M. G. (1893). In Easton’s Bible dictionary. New York: Harper & Brothers. It could also mean “beauty” or “let him make wide” in the definitions given by Horn, S. H. (1979). In The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary (p. 551). Review and Herald Publishing Association. In Hebrew, the word “Shem” is often translated “person” according to Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 170). Review and Herald Publishing Association. Finally, “Ham” seems to mean “warm” or “hot” and is also an Egyptian word meaning “black” as recorded by Easton, M. G. (1893). In Easton’s Bible dictionary. New York: Harper & Brothers.
Summaries about Noah’s kids come from a few places including Genesis 5:32 and Genesis 6:10 but who was oldest and youngest takes stringing a few different verses together. You can read about the details in a WiderBible article here.
For the comment that 40,000 hours were needed to build a 100 foot Viking ship, see Line, P. The Vikings and Their Enemies (chapter 3). I rounded the 30 meter length in the book (98 feet) up to 100 feet. The book goes on to state that 40,000 hours would be about the amount of time provided by the surplus hours of 100 men for a year.
For the comment that Noah would’ve been able to put the iron tooling inventions of Tubal-Cain to use in building the Ark, see note on Genesis 6:16, here.
For Noah referred to as a “preacher” (KJV) or “herald” (ESV) of righteousness, see 2 Peter 2:5. This comment is taken as evidence that he warned the people around him about what was coming by both Barker, K. L. (2002) NIV Study Bible. 2 Peter 2:5, note. Zondervan and Horn, S. H. (1979). In The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary (pp. 800–801). Review and Herald Publishing Association. Noah wasn’t the only preacher, either. According to Jude 1:14-15, Enoch was recorded prophecying as well. See also this commentary.
For the land “rising” out of the sea at creation, see Genesis 1:9-10.
People debate whether or not there was rain before the Flood. The best argument against it raining earlier in history is Genesis 2:5-6 which mentions a mist watering the land when God had not yet caused it to rain, but that detail is part of the creation story, not necessarily a description of the steady-state climate of the pre-Flood world. Other support for the idea that it hadn’t rained before the Flood might come from Hebrews 11:7 which commends Noah for faith in things he hadn’t yet seen, though there were a lot of parts of a global flood he’d never before seen, so narrowing it down to rain isn’t necessarily warranted. In Genesis 7:4, God mentions “rain” to Noah. This suggests that either (A) there had been rain, and Noah knew what it was, (B) God explained rain to Noah, but Genesis only records an abridged version of what God told him, or (C) when Moses wrote the story in Genesis, with rain being a well-known phenomena, he used the term the audience was familiar with in the same way rain is already mentioned in Genesis 2:5-6. That said, later, after the Flood (spoiler alert) there’s a rainbow (see Genesis 9:13-16. Genesis doesn’t say it was a new thing, but that conclusion makes the most sense. If people were used to seeing clouds and rainbows before the Flood, they wouldn’t think anything of seeing them afterward. On the other hand, if clouds and rainbows were unknown until the Flood struck, seeing them again in the future could bring mass panic without God’s promise of no future global Flood. All that said, there’s scholars on both sides of the debate. For the “no rain until the Flood” argument, see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 222). Review and Herald Publishing Association which suggests some of these ideas. For counterpoints and the conclusion that we can’t tell whether or not it had rained before the Flood based on what the Bible says, see this article.
For an overview of the water cycle as well as a reference to those solid bits that water vapor needs in order to condense, see here and here. Even ice crystals generally start forming on some solid surface, as mentioned here. In the case of that study, the particles that formed ice crystals in clouds were salt and organic matter, but it goes on to say that the particles are probably geography dependent: more sea salt over the ocean, more minerals or organic matter over land. Too much pollution, can also lead to decreased rain, probably because the water condenses onto many small particles rather than merging into a drop big enough to overcome gravity and fall from the cloud, but that’s my speculation. See the abstract here. For one reference to condensation nuclei, see here. For the scale of condensation nuclei, see here.
For how contrails form, see here.
For the comment that most of the sites of nucleation in the atmosphere today come from mineral dust and metal particles, see here. At the same time, another source suggested that pollen could also be a nucleation site, to it is unclear whether human pollutants are or are not a major driver of rainfall.
75 mile-per-hour winds are common in the Hami basin. They’ve also clocked 120 mile-per-hour winds. For more, see the article here. For the Saffir-Simpson Hurrican Wind Scale, see here. For sand from the Sahara blowing out across the Atlantic Ocean, see here.
One article also references the heat from the tropics spiraling toward the poles as a source of wind, which makes you wonder how that weather pattern would change if the Earth were square to the sun rather than tilted on its axis.
For the causes of the Great Plains “dust bowl” of the 1930s, including a reference to the lack of plants holding the topsoil in place, see here.
We have no idea who Japheth, Shem, and Ham married, we just know from Genesis 7:7 that they were married when the Flood came. Furthermore, given statements in 1 Peter 3:20, we know that only 8 people got on the Ark, so, in spite of the polygamy in society before the Flood, Noah and his sons were monogamous. Among people who followed God, polygamy only shows up a few hundred years later with Abraham as observed by Kidner, D. (1967). Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 98). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press. One commentary expressed surprise that Noah’s sons didn’t have kids of their own by this point, but it’s important to remember that (A) perhaps they had kids but those kids refused to board the Ark, (B) the previous three generations of the family were each born when the father was older than 180 (see Genesis 5:25-32) so late-in-life children wouldn’t have been so unusual, and (C) with the imminence of the Flood, perhaps those couples held off on having kids by choice.
For a more detailed discussion of the design of the Ark, see the end of Episode 11.
For the idea that the Ark was a daily reminder of imminent judgment, see the note on Genesis 6:18 here.
For the Hebrew word for “ark” being similar to the root for an Egyptian word for “coffin,” see Kidner, D. (1967). Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary (Vol. 1, pp. 94–95). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
One interesting article I stumbled across notes the fire-resistant qualities of some cypress trees. In 2012 a fire near the town of Andilla in Valencia, Spain burned 77 square miles of forest, except for a cluster of around 950 cypress trees. There’s a photo of it that shows a green patch of trees on a burned out hillside. As of 2012, scientists didn’t know why the cypresses survived, but they were starting to talk about planting cypresses as fire-breaks to stop forest fires from spreading. If the Gopher wood Genesis mentions is Cypress, it may have had fire resistant qualities. Even so, barring Divine intervention, I would guess the Ark was a high fire risk. First, whether the live tree burns easily or not, at least some varieties burn easily enough to make tar and be dubbed the “tar tree” by Arabic sources as referenced here. Second, even if the wood of the Ark was fire resistant, the tar the Ark itself was coated in was probably quite flammable.
For a commentary imagining the labors of Noah and the danger and tedium of the work of building the Ark, see the note from Genesis 6:22 here. For emphasis of Noah’s obedeince, see Genesis 6:22 as well as the note in Barker, K. L. (2002) NIV Study Bible. Genesis 6:22, note. Zondervan.
For the production of pine tar in a pit furnace, see here, For the use of trees for tar and turpetine for naval ships, see here. For the history of the name “Tar Heel” in North Carolina, see here as well as one of its sources here which also mentions the channels of sticky tar that flow out from under a fire deprived of airflow.
For tar production during the Viking age, see here and here.
For the amount of tar you get from a tree, see this source that references 50 gallons of tar from a cord of wood. For the volume of firewood produced by a tree, see this source which suggests a tree measuring 22-inches in diameter (4.5 feet up from the ground) yields about 1 cord of wood.
For the color of pine tar, see here.
Genesis isn’t explicit about how the animals came. The ESV translates the text by just saying the animals “went into the ark.” The notes on Genesis 7:9 here and here suggests that God compelled the animals to present themselves to Noah. The note on Genesis 7:5 here says the animals came to Noah by God’s direction. Scholarly opinions aside, Genesis isn’t explicit, but given that God, not Noah, knew which animals would be best to save from the Flood to use to repopulate the world, and that these might not be the same animals Noah was most able to trap, cage, and drag into the Ark, it makes sense that God brought them to Noah.
For a discussion of the number and types of animals that came to the Ark, see Genesis 6:19-20 for God’s original command and [Genesis 7:2-3 (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis+7%3A2-3&version=ESV) for God’s command to Noah right before the Flood. According to statements here and in Kidner, D. (1967). Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 96). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press the initial command was the general rule and only later did God spell out the caveat for greater numbers of the clean animals. As far a the ambiguity between seven clean animals or seven pairs of clean animals, the ESV leaves both options open (see the footnotes on Genesis 7:2-3), but there’s some debate. The note on Gensis 7:2 in this commentary suggests only seven clean animals came, with the clean ones being there because they could be used for sacrifices. The same idea comes up in the note on Genesis 7:2 here, here, and here (as well as others) where three pairs were for breeding to build up a new herd and the odd one out was for a sacrifice. One source (Easton, M. G. (1893). In Easton’s Bible dictionary. New York: Harper & Brothers.) claims that there were seven pairs of every kind of bird, but I couldn’t figure out where that idea came from. The distinction between “clean” and “unclean” animals flies under the radar a little here, but the fact that such a system is used this early in history, even though the details are spelled out only later in the Bible (see Leviticus 11) makes it clear that people as early as Noah understood that there was a difference between certain types of animals. For more, see Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, pgs. 254-256). Review and Herald Publishing Association as well as Doukhan, J. B. (2016). Seventh-day Adventist International Bible Commentary (pg. 146). Pacific Press Publishing Association.
On the note for Genesis 6:13, one commentary describes the ridicule Noah probably faced for telling people about a looming disaster when there was no external reason to think anything was wrong in the world. The note on Genesis 6:18 in this commentary also suggests Noah was mocked for his efforts.
For more on motivated reasoning, see here.
My estimate of “tens of millions of people” in the world at the time of the Flood is based on assuming each couple had 7 kids and the generations were spaced 117 years apart, the average gap listed in the genealogy in Genesis 6 if you remove Noah, who had kids at 500 and is a mathematical outlier. I go into a little more detail on these numbers in Episode 9. That said, the “tens of millions” number is probably conservative. Having 7 kids per couple is doable with lifespans a tenth the length of those listed in Genesis and the generation gaps could also be much shorter. If the generation gap was 65 years instead of 117, the population at the time of the Flood was in the tens of trillions, not accounting for wars and such. That said, I gave some sense of how many people may have rejected Noah’s warning, but with the data available in Genesis, the true number could be much lower or much, much higher.
As part of the cautionary tale, it’s worth noting that Jesus said (in Matthew 24:37-39 that the world before His return would be like it was in the days when Noah entered the Ark, and if they were good at rationalizing away evidence of God’s warning then, people will be again.
Like so many patriarchs, it’s not entirely clear what Methuselah’s name means. One suggestion was that it simply translates as, “the man of Shelah” where “Shelah” is assumed to refer to a deity (see here). Other options come from various sources. For “the armed warrior,” see here. For “man of a dart” or “man of military arms,” as well as other suggestions, see here as well as Easton, M. G. (1893). In Easton’s Bible dictionary. New York: Harper & Brothers. For “man of the javelin,” see Horn, S. H. (1979). In The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary (p. 734). Review and Herald Publishing Association. Another source suggests “Man of the sword,” is the right translation. For “Methuselah” referring to a coming judgment see here, which translates the name as “he dies, there is a dart,’ and refers to ‘a sending forth,’ of the Flood. Alternatively, this commentary says, “He dieth, and the sending forth” and attributes the name as a prophecy from Enoch. This one paraphrases the name as, “He dies, and the dart or arrow of God’s vengeance comes;” or, “He dies, and the sending forth of the waters comes.” Finally, pg. 128 here gives the translation of “when he is dead, it shall be sent.”. If this is the case, it fits. Methuselah did die the same year the Flood came, and there may be evidence of God’s patience here. Methuselah lived to be older than anyone else recorded in the Bible. Perhaps he lived so long because God delayed judgment on the world.
It’s interesting to note that Genesis 5 begins with the line, “This is the book of the generations of Adam.” In one commentary that comment was taken to be a reference to the existence of writing prior to the Flood, and if you think about it, it might imply that the very words we have recorded in the fifth chapter of Genesis are the same words the people before the Flood recorded and the writing that would have been on documents Noah packed up and carried aboard the Ark with him. All of this is by no means certain. Noah could have written everything down from memory after the Flood. Moses could have written it down from oral tradition hundreds of years later. We don’t know if these words come direct from the pen of Noah, but it is certainly an intriguing thought. For more, see Kidner, D. (1967). Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 85). Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
The ESV footnote for Genesis 7:4 makes it clear how total the Flood would be since the phrase saying God would wipe out “every living thing,” can also be translated, “all existence.”
In the New Testament, the Flood works as an analogy for baptism. Here, Noah let go of the world that was “only evil continually” and went into something reminiscent of a coffin because that was the only way to survive the Flood. In the case of baptism, the Christian symbolically dies to their old life of sin and comes up out of the water committed to living a new life of faithfulness to God. For more, see 1 Peter 3:18-22. For baptism as an analogy for death to sin, see Romans 6:1-4.
For details on the Venetian ships with their horse cargo and the practice of caulking the door to make it watertight after the horses were on board, see pg 36, here.
For a reference to the Babylonian (Chaldean) story where the main character in the Flood has to shut himself into the ship, see the note on Genesis 7:16, here.
For God closing the door of the Ark, one reference says the phrase is literally "covered him round about” and means that Noah was under God’s personal care. Another commentary sees the act of closing the door as a protective gesture that was to be a blessing for humans (see Doukhan, J. B. (2016). Seventh-day Adventist International Bible Commentary (pg. 148). Pacific Press Publishing Association.). In that sense, God shutting Noah into the Ark should be understood as a form of protection, not imprisonment. This is supported by the comments on Genesis 7:16 from a Jewish commentary that points out that the word used for God shutting Noah in is used to mean “in front of,” often in the context of shielding or protecting someone.
Jesus gives a summary in Matthew 24:37-39 of what happened to all of Noah’s contemporaries after he went aboard the Ark. In that passage Jesus describes carefree behavior right up until the Flood swept them away and then Jesus draws a parallel between those people and others who will do the same thing right before the end of time.
Scholars have a lot of different views on what happened during that last week before the Flood. Perhaps the most common chronology suggests that God told Noah to enter the Ark seven days before the Flood, and Noah spent that seven days getting his family, the animals, and the food on board the ship, but only finished getting on board on the seventh day, at which point God closed the door to the Ark. In support of this timeline, see note on Genesis 7:1 here, as well as here, here, note on Genesis 7:7 here, note on Genesis 7:13 here, note on Genesis 7:4 here, and note on Genesis 7:13 here. Other sources (see note on Genesis 7:4 here as well as notes on Genesis 7:1-12 here) mention that the last week was a last chance for people to change their minds and come on board. That’s one option for the order of events. An alternative timeline suggests that Noah boarded the Ark at the start of the week. There are two versions of this scenario. In the first, the door on the Ark was left open throughout that week as an invitation to anyone who wanted to repent and come aboard (see note on Genesis 7:5, here). In the second version, the door to the Ark was closed right after Noah boarded on that first day of the week, and he and his family and the animals were sealed off from the world for a week before the Flood began. Although not explicitly stated, this is probably the timeline followed here as well as the one from the note on Genesis 7:4 here. This order of events, with Noah entering the Ark on the first day of the week and the door being closed on that same day, is also the timeline followed by Adventist scholars. It is offered by Nichol, F. D. (Ed.). (1978). The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary (Vol. 1, p. 256). Review and Herald Publishing Association., Horn, S. H. (1979). In The Seventh-day Adventist Bible Dictionary (p. 801). Review and Herald Publishing Association. and by Doukhan, J. B. (2016). Seventh-day Adventist International Bible Commentary (pg. 146-148). Pacific Press Publishing Association. By way of support for this apparently minor view of the pre-Flood timeline, Doukhan’s explanation of the verses in Genesis 7 notes that Genesis uses different grammar in Genesis 7:7 for “enter” than it does in Genesis 7:13. In the first case Noah “enters,” the Ark. In the second, Noah “had entered” or “had already entered” the boat. In terms of Adventist understanding, the delay before the Flood could be related to the idea of the close of probation at the end of time (see the entry for “probation” in The Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia. (1996). Review and Herald Publishing Association.), an event which is analogous to the world in Noah’s day according to Christ’s statements in both Matthew 24:37-39 and Luke 17:26-30. Furthermore, that last week perhaps functioned as an opportunity for heavenly angels and other created beings to verify for themselves that God was just and fair in wiping out the people in the world who ignored Noah’s warning and were set on being “only evil continually,” an idea that fits within the framework Adventists refer to as the “Great Controversy” (see here), but that is my speculation. In any case, this episode follows the timeline as understood by Seventh-Day Adventists, but the alternative chronologies supported by the scholars mentioned above are also possible given the statements in Genesis 7, Matthew 24, and Luke 17.
For the seven days on the Ark before the Flood being seven days of mourning for Methuselah according to Jewish tradition, see note on Genesis 7:10, here.
In terms of when the Flood itself started, on day seven or day eight, the ESV translation is ambiguous. It uses “For in seven days” in Genesis 7:4 and “After seven days,” in Genesis 7:10. Of the two ideas, the eighth day is probably the better conclusion. Different conjugations are used for that phrase in the two texts in the NASB lexicon (see here and here) but the NASB translates them both as “after,” as does the ESV for Genesis 7:10. This supports the idea that rain didn’t come on the seventh day, but after the seventh day was over. For more, see here.
We know the Flood began on the seventeenth day of the month according to Genesis 7:11, but as for it beginning in October see the explanation here, though recognize that this is a “most likely” conclusion.
Whether animals have an ability to sense certain natural disasters before they strike is up for debate. On the one hand, birds sometimes shelter before a storm and sharks do swim out to deeper water before a hurricane, but the data on animals fleeing tsunamis and earthquakes is less clear. For more, see here and here.