Genesis 7" 13 - 24

¹³In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah's wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;  ¹⁴They, and every beast after his kind, and all the cattle after their kind, and every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind, and every fowl after his kind, every bird of every sort.
 ¹⁵And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.
 ¹⁶And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in.
 ¹⁷And the flood was forty days upon the earth; and the waters increased, and bare up the ark, and it was lift up above the earth.
 ¹⁸And the waters prevailed, and were increased greatly upon the earth; and the ark went upon the face of the waters.
 ¹⁹And the waters prevailed exceedingly upon the earth; and all the high hills, that were under the whole heaven, were covered.
 ²⁰Fifteen cubits upward did the waters prevail; and the mountains were covered.
 ²¹And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man:
 ²²All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.
 ²³And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and Noah only remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.
 ²⁴And the waters prevailed upon the earth an hundred and fifty days.

As you can see, the story is summarized again. It is believed that part of the reason for retelling the stories was because there was an oral tradition of the bible. We have to remember that most people could not read or write and that books were made individually, there was no printing press and the books had to be written out completely by hand. This makes it all the more amazing that when we find old bibles that they are almost 100" identical in what they say. The oral tradition was just as accurate.

In Hebrew all letters are also numbers and if one counts up the letters they get a sum, a total. In english it would work like this, if your name was Bob, then numerically it would be both 3+15+3 and 21 at the same time. Each word has a number and each sentence had a number and each book had a number. In the oral tradition people could count off the numbers to make sure that things "added up".

So after 40 days and nights of rain the waters remained on the earth for another 150 days. That means that Noah and his family spent 197 days on the ship (remember they entered 7 days before the rain began). They spent over half a year trapped on a boat feeding and cleaning up after every animal that there was and they did this knowing that when they landed everything they ever knew would be gone. Once again we see a need for a time of separation from our past before we can begin our future, a cleansing of old ways. If we are to truly attempt to be a Christian, a period of separation can also be needed before beginning our new life.