Gopher wood or gopherwood is a term used once

Hapax legomenon

A hapax legomenon is a word which occurs only once within a context, either in the written record of an entire language, in the works of an author, or just in a single text. The term is sometimes used incorrectly to describe a word that occurs in just one of an author's works, even though it...

 in the Bible

Bible

The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...

, for the substance from which Noah's ark

Noah's Ark

Noah's Ark is a vessel appearing in the Book of Genesis and the Quran . These narratives describe the construction of the ark by Noah at God's command to save himself, his family, and the world's animals from the worldwide deluge of the Great Flood.In the narrative of the ark, God sees the...

 was built. Gen 6:14 states that Noah was to build the Ark of גפר, gofer, more commonly gopher wood, a word not otherwise known in the Bible or in Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

.

Although,Older English translations, including the King James Version (17th century), simply leave it untranslated.

The word is unrelated to the name of the North American animal, the gopher

Gopher (animal)

The term gopher as it is commonly used does not relate to any one species, but is a generic term used to describe any of several small burrowing rodents endemic to North America, including the pocket gopher , also called true gophers, and the ground squirrel , including Richardson's ground squirrel...

.

Question over identity

The Greek Septuagint (3rd–1st centuries BC) translated it as xylon tetragonon, "squared timber". Similarly, the Latin Vulgate

Vulgate

The Vulgate is a late 4th-century Latin translation of the Bible. It was largely the work of St. Jerome, who was commissioned by Pope Damasus I in 382 to make a revision of the old Latin translations...

 (5th century AD) rendered it as lignis levigatis (lævigatis, in the Clementine Vulgate), "smoothed (possibly planed) wood".

The Jewish Encyclopedia

Jewish Encyclopedia

The Jewish Encyclopedia is an encyclopedia originally published in New York between 1901 and 1906 by Funk and Wagnalls. It contained over 15,000 articles in 12 volumes on the history and then-current state of Judaism and the Jews as of 1901...

believes it was most likely a translation of the Babylonian "gushure i÷ erini" (cedar-beams), or the Assyrian "giparu" (reed).

Many modern English translations tend to favour cypress

Cupressus sempervirens

Cupressus sempervirens, the Mediterranean Cypress is a species of cypress native to the eastern Mediterranean region, in northeast Libya, southeast Greece , southern Turkey, Cyprus, Northern Egypt, western Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Malta, Italy, western Jordan, and also a disjunct population in...

 (although otherwise the word for "cypress" in Biblical Hebrew

Biblical Hebrew language

Biblical Hebrew , also called Classical Hebrew , is the archaic form of the Hebrew language, a Canaanite Semitic language spoken in the area known as Canaan between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. Biblical Hebrew is attested from about the 10th century BCE, and persisted through...

 is brosh). This was espoused (among others) by Adam Clarke

Adam Clarke

Adam Clarke was a British Methodist theologian and Biblical scholar, born in the townland of Moybeg Kirley near Tobermore in Ireland...

, a Methodist theologian famous for his commentary on the Bible: Clarke cited the resemblance between Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

 word for cypress, kuparisson and the Hebrew word gophar.

Other suggestions include pine

Pine

Pines are trees in the genus Pinus ,in the family Pinaceae. They make up the monotypic subfamily Pinoideae. There are about 115 species of pine, although different authorities accept between 105 and 125 species.-Etymology:...

, cedar, fir

Fir

Firs are a genus of 48–55 species of evergreen conifers in the family Pinaceae. They are found through much of North and Central America, Europe, Asia, and North Africa, occurring in mountains over most of the range...

, ebony

Ebony

Ebony is a dense black wood, most commonly yielded by several species in the genus Diospyros, but ebony may also refer to other heavy, black woods from unrelated species. Ebony is dense enough to sink in water. Its fine texture, and very smooth finish when polished, make it valuable as an...

, wicker

Wicker

Wicker is hard woven fiber formed into a rigid material, usually used for baskets or furniture. Wicker is often made of material of plant origin, but plastic fibers are also used....

, juniper

Juniper

Junipers are coniferous plants in the genus Juniperus of the cypress family Cupressaceae. Depending on taxonomic viewpoint, there are between 50-67 species of juniper, widely distributed throughout the northern hemisphere, from the Arctic, south to tropical Africa in the Old World, and to the...

, acacia

Acacia

Acacia is a genus of shrubs and trees belonging to the subfamily Mimosoideae of the family Fabaceae, first described in Africa by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in 1773. Many non-Australian species tend to be thorny, whereas the majority of Australian acacias are not...

, boxwood

Buxus

Buxus is a genus of about 70 species in the family Buxaceae. Common names include box or boxwood ....

, slimed bulrushes

Bulrush

-Wetland plants:* Bolboschoenus, a genus in the sedge family * Cyperus, a genus in the sedge family * Scirpus, a genus in the sedge family * Schoenoplectus, a genus in the sedge family...

and resinous wood, and even American trees such as Cladrastis kentukea (American yellowwood), although the latter did not exist in the region the ark was supposedly built.

Others, noting the physical similarity between the Hebrew letters

Hebrew alphabet

The Hebrew alphabet , known variously by scholars as the Jewish script, square script, block script, or more historically, the Assyrian script, is used in the writing of the Hebrew language, as well as other Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish, Ladino, and Judeo-Arabic. There have been two...

 g and k, suggest that the word may actually be kopher, the Hebrew word meaning "pitch

Pitch (resin)

Pitch is the name for any of a number of viscoelastic, solid polymers. Pitch can be made from petroleum products or plants. Petroleum-derived pitch is also called bitumen. Pitch produced from plants is also known as resin. Products made from plant resin are also known as rosin.Pitch was...

"; thus kopher wood would be pitched wood. Recent suggestions have included a lamination process (to strengthen the Ark), or a now-lost type of tree, but there is no consensus.

Cypress Pine
late 12c., from O.Fr. cipres, from L. cyparissus, from Gk. kyparissos, from an unknown pre-Greek Mediterranean language. Perhaps related to Heb. gopher, name of the tree whose wood was used to make the ark (Gen. vi.14).

External links

• What is "Gopher Wood?"
• Gopherwood and Construction of the Ark
• The Free Dictionary - Gopherwood (giving a definition of Cladrastis kentukea)
• Jewish Encyclopedia (explaining that gopher may be reeds)
• Gopher Wood (A Canadian movie which references the term)