An erudite reader will immediately mentally object: “The Ark was built not by Moses, but by Noah,” and he will certainly be right. These two biblical characters are often confused. So, first you need to figure out who is who. But first things first.
Reasons for confusion
First of all, it is worth noting that it arises due to insufficient acquaintance with the Bible, because this book is the source of reliable information about these people. But most people prefer reading Bible films to reading films, but they often have a lot of inaccuracies or fiction. Many directors distort the story, creating stories in which they unite such characters whose life paths have never crossed in time. For example, in one of them, Noah, floating on the ark, met Lot (who lived about 500 years after the flood), who was traveling on water in a catamaran! Therefore, it is not surprising that questions arise such as "How many animals did Moses take to his ark?" and the like.
Naturally, there are many skeptics who question both the fact of the global flood and the miracles of the times of Moses, for example, that the waters of the Red Sea diverged and allowed a whole people to pass through the dry bottom. This is their opinion, to which they are entitled. Of course, there are many arguments and facts proving the opposite, but now is not about that. The purpose of this article is to summarize the information that is in the original source, and the right to believe or not to leave to the reader.
What is known about Moses?
The first mention of him is in the book of Exodus, which tells about his birth and life until the age of 80. His father was Amram, and the mother of Jochebed, both were descendants of Levi, the great-grandson of Abraham. According to biblical chronology, Moses was born in 1593 BC. in Egypt at a time when his people - the Jews - were enslaved. Moreover, the threat immediately hung over the life of the newborn Moses: shortly before his birth, an order was given to kill all male babies. But his mother put him in a basket for papyrus and put it on the banks of the Nile, where the child was found by the daughter of the pharaoh, who adopted the boy. Therefore, he was given the name Moses, which means "taken out of the water."
He was brought up at the court of the pharaoh, received a high education, and a wonderful career opened before him, but he knew about his origin and was very keen to help his enslaved people. When he was 40 years old, he left Egypt and went to live in the area of Madiam. After another 40 years, he received an assignment from God to return to Egypt and bring the Jewish people out of captivity and bring them to the land where their ancestors used to live. This was preceded by 10 executions by the Egyptians, and the climax was the passage through the Red Sea, which became the grave for the pharaoh and his army.
Then followed the grueling 40 years of walking in the Sinai desert. But Moses could not cross the threshold of the Promised Land ; he died at the age of 120. If, in a nutshell, the question is what Moses did, who this person is and what role he played in the history of the Jewish people, it should be mentioned that he was an outstanding leader, military leader, judge, prophet and writer of six books of the Bible. But he had no direct relation to the flood, so the question of how many animals Moses took to his ark does not make sense.
Briefly about Noah
He was born about 1000 years earlier than Moses. His father was a contemporary of Adam, the first man. Due to severe moral decline, God decided to destroy the evil people with water and instructed his faithful minister Noah and his family to build a ship, later known as Noah's Ark. Animals, as well as people, could have been saved if they had gone there. But, unfortunately, only Noah’s family did it.
"Each creature in a pair"
Those who ask how many animals Moses took to his ark are interested in how many could fit on one ship at all. According to the narration from the book of Genesis (chapter 7), it was necessary to take seven of each genus (now zoologists call them species) of the so-called pure animals and two of the unclean (hence the expression "every creature in pairs").
What do the numbers say?
Does this mean that the ark should fit all existing species of animals? That sounds implausible. It is believed that hundreds of thousands of species of modern animals can be reduced to a relatively small number of "genera", such as the "genus" of sheep or the "genus" of dogs. Therefore, some scientists calculated that if there were only 10 "genera" of reptiles, 43 "genera" of mammals and 74 "genera" of birds in the ark, they would be able to produce the entire population of the living world that exists today. There was no need to rescue the inhabitants of the seas and oceans from the water.
Now, the calculations: 10 + 43 + 74 = 127 species of animals could approximately get on the ark. The animals were both clean and unclean, but it is not known how many were and how many others. Therefore, the number of individuals could range from 254 (127 * 2) to 889 (127 * 7). Even if their number were really within 9 hundred, they would fit nicely on a ship whose length was 133 meters, width 22 meters, and height 13 meters.
Based on all this, if you answer the question how many animals Moses took to his ark, then there is only one answer: not at all, because Noah did this, it was he who had to place several hundred individuals on his ship.
For skeptics, all of the above sounds like a fairy tale. Nevertheless, even many respected archaeologists and historians admit that at some period the whole earth suddenly became covered with water, and on Mount Ararat the search for the ark did not stop.