For Johan Huibers, Noah’s Ark is more than just one of the most iconic images of the first book of the Bible; it’s the blueprint for the project which has consumed him for close to two decades. In 1992, the Dutch owner of a construction company awoke from a nightmare in which the Netherlands was submerged in water. The dream spurred him to set sail on what proved a twenty year endeavor: to build an Ark according to G-d’s instructions to Noah in the sixth chapter of Genesis. Now, throngs of tourists stream in to Dordrecht, Netherlands daily to view his completed work, which weighs in at about 3,000 pounds and spans more than half the length of the Titanic.
In 2004, Huibers built a smaller replica of Noah’s Ark which he opened to the public and then channeled the profits to help finance the full-scale model. In the end, he spent $1.6 million of his own money to actualize his life-long dream. Nicknamed “Johan’s Ark,” the second ship boasts a movie theatre, a restaurant, and a Genesis-themed train ride. Unlike its diluvian counterpart, Johan’s ship does not house every animal in existence, though it does feature a menagerie of plastic animals as well as a petting zoo with dogs, ponies, and sheep.
Of course, the passengers on board are not the only aspect of the ship which distinguishes it from the biblical boat. In Genesis, G-d commands Noah to build an ark out of “gopher wood.” The exact nature of gopher wood is a matter of dispute among scholars; Johan substituted the gopher wood for steel frames and American cedar wood. Also, according to the Bible, the boat Noah built was three hundred cubits long, fifty cubits wide, and thirty cubits high. To convert this biblical system of measurement to modern times, Johan based his calculations on the length of his own arm and generated the dimensions in feet: about 450 feet long, 75 feet high, and 90 feet wide. The boat has a capacity of about 1,500 passengers.
For its daily deluge of visitors, the finished boat serves as a sort of floating biblical museum. One such visitor, Martin Konijn, commented after viewing Johan’s ship that “you might know the story of Noah, okay, but if you see this you begin to get an idea of how it would actually have worked in practice.” Though the Netherlands has been ravaged by floods in the past, Huibers doesn’t fear another deluge the scope of the biblical flood; the sight of a rainbow signifies G-d’s promise that He will never again destroy the world with water as He did in the days of Noah. Instead, Johan’s motivation for building the ship is, according to his website, “to tell people that there is a G-d who loves us, and that He has a plan for our lives.” Unfortunately, some have misconstrued the intent of Johan’s efforts. Prior to the purported “end-of-the-world” as predicted by the Mayan calendar, the manager of the ark, Deborah Venema-Huibers, was forced to re-iterate that “this is not a rescue boat. It’s a museum.”
Huibers is currently contemplating the ship’s next destination: possibly another European port or even across the Atlantic. If the buzz from its first debut is any indication, wherever Johan’s boat will dock next, it is sure to make waves.
Quotes derived from the Huffington Post and www.examiner.com