Hermione Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> robin cook Wrote:
> -------------------------------------------------------
> > [Origen] came up with a pyramid shape for his
> > ark by battening together statements in the Old
> > Testament in a rather awkward way.
>
> I don't think "awkward battening" is an accurate
> description.

- Well I tend to agree with Colavito, the musings of religious scholars on the subject are just silly. Their psychological and moral insights may be valuable but their 'scientific' statements don't correspond to reality.

> The OT texts were originally written in Hebrew,
> and then translated at various times into
> different versions of Greek, Latin, etc.
>
> I previously posted a link to various alternative
> versions of present-day English translations:
> [www.biblegateway.com]).
>
> As previously mentioned, the Latin version
> considered by Origen appears here -
> [www.google.co.uk],
> p. 162:
>
>

Quote

Et dixit, inquit, Dominus ad Noe: Tempus
> omnis hominis venit ante me, quoniam impleta est
> terra iniquitatibus ab eia, et ecce ego disperdam
> illos cum terra. Fac ergo tibi arcam de lignis
> quadratis, nidos facies in arca, et bituminabis
> eam ab intus et a foris bitumine, et sic facies
> arcam. Trecentorum cubitorum longitudinem arcae,
> et quinquagiuta cubitorum latitudinem, et triginta
> cubutorum altitudinem eius collegins faces arcam,
> et in cubitum consummabis eam in summum.
>
> [Google trans.:] And the Lord said to Noah: The
> time of every man is come before me, because the
> earth is filled with iniquity from her; and,
> behold, I will destroy them with the earth.
> Therefore, make yourself an ark of square wood,
> you will make nests in the box, and pitch it on
> the inside and pitch it on the outside, and so you
> will make the ark. The length of the ark was three
> hundred cubits, and the breadth fifty cubits, and
> the height of it thirty cubits: you shall collect
> the ark, and you shall finish it in a cubit on the
> top.

>
> So it depends on how Origen understood, and how
> later generations were to understand, the phrase:
> "et in cubitum consummabis eam in summum".

- Pre-modern era writers did not have the mathematical concept of zero. So they had to have a '1' at the top.

> > 15th.C artists used Origen's account to portray
> > the ark. Ghiberti came up with a version that
> > surprisingly corresponds to reality and my
> > original question asked how he might have
> arrived
> > at this - did he have a lost source or, as I
> > concede, is it more likely that the resulting
> > shape was the result of his own geometrical
> > exercises?
>
> The Deluge Ark (Mesoptamian, Hebrew, Greek) is a
> fictional construct.

- Indeed.

> The difficulties of imagining it, given the
> problems associated with translation, have just
> been outlined.
>
> Ghiberti's Ark corresponds to his understanding of
> Origen's understanding of a version (translated
> several times) of an ancient text based on
> traditions that described Noah's Ark as a sort of
> cube or rectangle, and not a pyramid.
>
> (Two authors are believed to be responsible for
> the OT Flood story: the Jahvist (ca. 950 BC), and
> Priestly. The description of the Genesis Ark's
> measurements are attributed to the Priestly
> author, who, as you suggest, might have come into
> contact with the much older NE version whilst in
> Babylon. But, clearly, a version of the Flood
> tradition was in circulation before the Exile.)

- And where did this earlier version come from if not Mesopotamia?

The illustration of Uccello's pyramid is obviously a copy of an original work by Uccello. It is titled '33'. I tried a reverse image search on google but came up with nothing. I must have picked it up during a frenzied search. I now realize it is a poor copy of the famous painting in Santa Maria Novella in Florence -

[en.wikipedia.org]

This painting by Uccello is lauded because of the evidence of perspective in the two objects on either side. Yet there are two realistic pyramids as well - one is to the left on the panel below, and the other at top centre. In image '3' the copyist has misinterpreted the side of the pyramid as an arc. Yet the top image seems very realistic.

But are there any other pictures from the period showing arks as pyramids?