Parshat Noach continues the tale of human history; after more than a thousand years of humanity sliding down a path of immorality, Hashem decides that it is time for a reset. Only one family would survive, and recover to rebuild and resettle the world: Noach (Noah) and his three sons, and their wives. Noach, which in Hebrew is spelled “נח", would survive until his descendant Avraham was 58 years old.
Ironically, Noach in gematriya equals 58!
Much archaeological debate exists around the location of the "teivah," or ark that Noach used to shelter from the flood Hashem brought to cleanse the world, with most assuming that, because the posuk states (Bereishit 8:4): "The ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat…" that the teivah, or remnants of the teivah, presumably should be found in the mountains of Ararat in Turkey.
The pesukim do continue, and state, however, that the “...The waters continued to diminish until the tenth month. In the tenth [month], on the first of the month, the mountaintops became visible…" Thus, it is very possible that teivah initially rested on the mountaintops of Ararat, only to afterwards continue to float with the receding floodwaters.
When reading the Rambam, it appears very likely that in fact, the teivah floated away from Mount Ararat. Rambam writes (Hilchot Beit HaBechirah 2:2): "...It is universally accepted that the place on which David and Solomon built the Altar… is the location where Abraham built the Altar on which he prepared Isaac for sacrifice."
"Noah built [an altar] on that location when he left the ark. It was also [the place] of the Altar on which Cain and Abel brought sacrifices. [Similarly,] Adam, the first man, offered a sacrifice there and was created at that very spot…"
The Torah tells us very clearly that (Bereishit 8:15-20): "...E-lohim spoke to Noach, saying, 'Depart from the ark, yourself and your wife, your sons, and your son’s wives with you. Every living thing that is with you, of all flesh, [including] birds, animals, every creeping creature that creeps on the earth, let them depart with you. Let them spread over the earth, and be fruitful and multiply on the earth.'"
"Noach departed [from the ark together with] his sons, his wife and son’s wives.
"Every living thing, every creeping creature, every bird, everything that creeps on the earth, departed from the ark according to their families. Noach built an altar to Ad-o-noy, and took of every [ritually] clean animal and of every [ritually] clean bird, and brought up burnt-offerings on the altar."
The pesukim state very clearly that Noach left the teivah, and - presumably - immediately offered sacrifices at the same exact location where, approximately 1500 years later, the Beit Hamikdash would be built! We therefore must conclude that the Rambam understood that the final resting place of the teivah must have been somewhere very close to Har Habayit, the Temple Mount. Support for this can be found in Midrash Tanchuma (Emor chap. 6), which compares the Mountains of Ararat to "the mountains of G-d," which would also imply that the teivah came to rest near the mountains of Jerusalem.
Interestingly, Midrash Yalkut Shimoni (Parshat Beshalach, Remez 256) states that Haman was able to locate a beam from the Teivah, upon which he planned to hang Mordechai; ironically that was the very beam upon which he himself would hang. The Midrash writes that Haman got this beam from his son, who was Governor of Kadaronia, which is considered to be near the Mountains of Ararat in Turkey; however, careful reading of the Midrash implies that Hashem left a beam of the teivah there so that the world would remember the destruction of the flood, and the saving of Noach. It is quite possible, as clearly insinuated by the Rambam, that the rest of the teivah wound up near the future site of the Beit Hamikdash.
Dedicated in memory of all those who have perished and sacrificed for Am Yisrael.