''Gopher wood'' or ''gopherwood'' is a term used once in the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

, to describe the material used to construct Noah's Ark. states that Noah was instructed to build the Ark of (), commonly transliterated as wood, a word not otherwise used in the Bible or the

Hebrew language Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and remained in regular use as a first language unti ...

in general (a ). Although some English Bibles attempt a translation, older English translations such as the

King James Version The King James Version (KJV), also the King James Bible (KJB) and the Authorized Version (AV), is an Early Modern English Bible translations, Early Modern English translation of the Christianity, Christian Bible for the Church of England, wh ...

(17th century) leave it untranslated. The word is unrelated to the name of the North American animal known as the

gopher Pocket gophers, commonly referred to simply as gophers, are burrowing rodents of the family Geomyidae. The roughly 41 speciesSearch results for "Geomyidae" on thASM Mammal Diversity Database are all endemic to North and Central America. They ar ...

Identity

The Greek

Septuagint The Septuagint ( ), sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy (), and abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Biblical Hebrew. The full Greek ...

(3rd–1st centuries BC) translates the phrase as (), , translating as . Similarly, the Latin

Vulgate The Vulgate () is a late-4th-century Bible translations into Latin, Latin translation of the Bible. It is largely the work of Saint Jerome who, in 382, had been commissioned by Pope Damasus I to revise the Gospels used by the Diocese of ...

(5th century AD) rendered it as (, in the spelling of the

Clementine Vulgate The Sixto-Clementine Vulgate or Clementine Vulgate () is an edition of the Latin Vulgate, the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. It was the second edition of the Vulgate to be formally authorized by the Catholic Church, the first be ...

), . ''

The Jewish Encyclopedia ''The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day'' is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on the ...

'' states that it was most likely a translation of the Akkadian term , , or the Assyrian , . Ancient and modern kuphar boats on the Tigris and Euphrates are also built of reeds, waterproofed with pitch. The Aramaic

Targum Onkelos Interlinear text of Hebrew Numbers 6.3–10 with British_Library.html" ;"title="Aramaic Targum Onkelos from the British Library">Aramaic Targum Onkelos from the British Library. Targum Onkelos (or Onqelos; , ''Targūm ’Unqəlōs'') is t ...

renders this word as , . The Syriac

Peshitta The Peshitta ( ''or'' ') is the standard Syriac edition of the Bible for Syriac Christian churches and traditions that follow the liturgies of the Syriac Rites. The Peshitta is originally and traditionally written in the Classical Syriac d ...

translates this word as , (boxwood). Many modern English translations favor an identification with ''

cypress Cypress is a common name for various coniferous trees or shrubs from the ''Cupressus'' genus of the '' Cupressaceae'' family, typically found in temperate climates and subtropical regions of Asia, Europe, and North America. The word ''cypress'' ...

''. This was espoused (among others) by

Adam Clarke Adam Clarke (176226 August 1832) was an Irish writer and biblical scholar. As a writer and biblical scholar, he published an influential Bible commentary among other works. Additionally, he was a Methodist theologian who served three times as ...

, a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...

theologian Theology is the study of religious belief from a religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of ...

famous for his commentary on the Bible: Clarke cited a resemblance between the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

word for cypress, κυπάρισσος , and the Hebrew word . Likewise, the (20th century) has it as . Others, noting the visual similarity between the Hebrew letters () and (), suggest that the word may actually be , the Hebrew word meaning : thus wood would be . Later suggestions for a dynamic equivalent of the word have included (to strengthen the Ark), or a now-lost type of tree, but there is no consensus.

References

External links

Gopherwood and Construction of the Ark

The Free Dictionary - "Gopherwood"
(giving a definition of ''Cladrastis kentukea'') {{DEFAULTSORT:Gopher Wood Noah's Ark Wood Plants in the Bible Plant common names Cedrus Cupressus Biblical studies