Searches for Noah's Ark
Encyclopedia
Eusebius of Caesarea
Eusebius of Caesarea also called Eusebius Pamphili, was a Roman historian, exegete and Christian polemicist. He became the Bishop of Caesarea in Palestine about the year 314. Together with Pamphilus, he was a scholar of the Biblical canon...
(c. 275 – 339 AD) to the present day, the search for the physical remains of 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...
has held a fascination for many people. Despite many expeditions, no scientific evidence of the ark has been found.
Antiquity
According to Genesis 8:4, the Ark came to rest "on the mountains of AraratMountains of Ararat
The Mountains of Ararat is the place named in the Book of Genesis where Noah's Ark came to rest after the great flood ....
."
Early commentators such as Josephus
Josephus
Titus Flavius Josephus , also called Joseph ben Matityahu , was a 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian and hagiographer of priestly and royal ancestry who recorded Jewish history, with special emphasis on the 1st century AD and the First Jewish–Roman War, which resulted in the Destruction of...
, and authorities quoted by him, Berossus
Berossus
Berossus was a Hellenistic-era Babylonian writer, a priest of Bel Marduk and astronomer writing in Greek, who was active at the beginning of the 3rd century BC...
, Hieronymus the Egyptian, Mnaseas
Mnaseas
Mnaseas of Patrae was a Greek historian of the late 3rd century BCE, who is reckoned to have been a pupil of Eratosthenes. His Periegesis or Periplus described Europe, Western Asia and North Africa, but whether in six or eight books cannot now be determined. His On Oracles appears to have...
, and Nicolaus of Damascus
Nicolaus of Damascus
Nicolaus of Damascus was a Greek historian and philosopher who lived during the Augustan age of the Roman Empire. His name is derived from that of his birthplace, Damascus. He was born around 64 BC....
, record the tradition that these "mountains of Ararat" are to be found in the region then known as Armenia
Roman Armenia
From the end of the 1st century BC onwards, Armenia was, in part or whole, subject to the Roman Empire and its successor, the East Roman or Byzantine Empire...
, roughly corresponding to Eastern Anatolia.
Syrian and Armenian tradition of the early centuries AD had a tradition of the ark landing at Mount Judi
Mount Judi
Mount Judi , according to very Early Christian and Islamic tradition , is the Noah's apobaterion or "Place of Descent", the location where the Ark came to rest after the Great Flood....
, where according to Josephus the remains of the ark were still shown in the 1st century AD. The location of the "Place of Descent" (αποβατηριον, i.e. Nakhchivan) described by Josephus was some 100 km to the southeast of the peak now known as Mount Ararat, in what is today Northern Iraq
Iraqi Kurdistan
Iraqi Kurdistan or Kurdistan Region is an autonomous region of Iraq. It borders Iran to the east, Turkey to the north, Syria to the west and the rest of Iraq to the south. The regional capital is Arbil, known in Kurdish as Hewlêr...
.
Middle Ages and early modern periods
Marco PoloMarco Polo
Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant traveler from the Venetian Republic whose travels are recorded in Il Milione, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned about trading whilst his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, travelled through Asia and apparently...
(1254–1324) wrote in his book, The Travels of Marco Polo
The Travels of Marco Polo
Books of the Marvels of the World or Description of the World , also nicknamed Il Milione or Oriente Poliano and commonly called The Travels of Marco Polo, is a 13th-century travelogue written down by Rustichello da Pisa from stories told by Marco Polo, describing the...
:
Sir Walter Raleigh, writing c. 1616, made a laborious argument taking up several whole chapters of his History of the World, that the term "Mountains of Ararat" originally encompassed all the adjoining and taller ranges of Asia, and that Noah's Ark could only have landed in the Orient — especially since Armenia is not technically east of the plain of Shinar (or Mesopotamia), but more northwest.
19th century
- In 1829, Dr. Friedrich Parrot, who had made an ascent of Greater Ararat, wrote in his Journey to Ararat that "all the ArmeniansArmeniansArmenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
are firmly persuaded that Noah's Ark remains to this very day on the top of Ararat, and that, in order to preserve it, no human being is allowed to approach it."
- In 1876, James BryceJames Bryce, 1st Viscount BryceJames Bryce, 1st Viscount Bryce OM, GCVO, PC, FRS, FBA was a British academic, jurist, historian and Liberal politician.-Background and education:...
, historian, statesman, diplomat, explorer, and Professor of Civil Law at Oxford, climbed above the tree line and found a slab of hand-hewn timber, four feet long and five inches thick, which he identified as being from the Ark. In 1883, the British Prophetic Messenger and others reported that Turkish commissioners investigating avalanches had seen the Ark.
Modern Searches (1949 to present)
Many searches have been largely supported by evangelicalEvangelicalism
Evangelicalism is a Protestant Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s and gained popularity in the United States during the series of Great Awakenings of the 18th and 19th century.Its key commitments are:...
and millenarian churches and sustained by ongoing popular interest sometimes expressed through faith-based magazines and lecture tours, videos, occasional television specials and more recently the Internet.
- In 1949 Aaron J. Smith, dean of the People's Bible College in Greensboro, NC, led an unsuccessful expedition to locate the ark.
- Former astronaut James IrwinJames IrwinJames Benson Irwin was an American astronaut and engineer. He served as Lunar Module pilot for Apollo 15, the fourth human lunar landing; he was the eighth person to walk on the Moon.-Early life:...
led two expeditions to Ararat in the 1980s, was kidnapped once, but found no tangible evidence of the Ark. "I've done all I possibly can," he said, "but the Ark continues to elude us."
- In the 1980s and 1990s the Durupınar site was heavily promoted by adventurer and former anesthesiologist Ron WyattRon WyattRonald Eldon Wyatt was an adventurer and former nurse anaesthetist noted for advocating the Durupınar site as the site of Noah's Ark, among other Bible-related pseudoarchaeology...
. It receives a steady stream of visitors and according to the local authorities a nearby mountain is called "Mount Cudi" (or JudiMount JudiMount Judi , according to very Early Christian and Islamic tradition , is the Noah's apobaterion or "Place of Descent", the location where the Ark came to rest after the Great Flood....
), making it one of about five Mount Judis in the land of Kurdistan. Geologists have identified the Durupınar site as a natural formation, but Wyatt's Ark Discovery Institute continues to champion its claims.
- In 2004, Honolulu-based businessman Daniel McGivern announced he would finance a $900,000 expedition to the peak of Greater Ararat in July of that year to investigate the "Ararat anomaly"—he had previously paid for commercial satellite images of the site. After much initial fanfare, he was refused permission by the Turkish authorities, as the summit is inside a restricted military zone. The expedition was subsequently labelled a "stunt" by National Geographic News, which pointed out that the expedition leader, a Turkish academic named Ahmet Ali Arslan, had previously been accused of faking photographs of the Ark.
- In June 2006, Bob CornukeBob CornukeBob Cornuke is an American writer and amateur archaeologist. Cornuke is president of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration Institute , which is operated from his home in Colorado Springs, Colorado...
of the Bible Archeology Search and Exploration Institute took a team of 14 American "business, law, and ministry leaders" to IranIranIran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
to visit a site in the Alborz MountainsAlborzAlborz , also written as Alburz, Elburz or Elborz, is a mountain range in northern Iran stretching from the borders of Azerbaijan and Armenia in the northwest to the southern end of the Caspian Sea, and ending in the east at the borders of Turkmenistan and Afghanistan...
, purported to be a possible resting place of the Ark. The team claimed to have discovered an "object" 13,000 feet above sea level, which had the appearance of blackened petrified wooden beams, and was "about the size of a small aircraft carrier" [400 ft (121.9 m)], and supposedly consistent with the dimensions provided in Genesis of 300 cubits by 50 cubits. The team also claimed to have found fossilised sea creatures inside the petrified wood, and in the immediate vicinity of the site. One member of the team claimed that 'a Houston lab used by the Smithsonian' tested some beams and confirmed they were petrified wood containing fossilised sea animals, but the name of the laboratory was not given. No one outside the expedition has offered independent confirmation, and apart from a few purported beams, no photographic images of this supposed Ark in its entirety have been made available (though short video segments have been made available). The team's consensus on the "object" is not absolute; Reg Lyle, another expedition member, described the find as appearing to be "a basalt dike". It is the official position of the BASE Institute that Iran was the logical resting place of the Ark. Their website does not definitely claim the object to be the Ark, but concludes that it is "a candidate".
- In 2007, a joint Turkish-Hong Kong expedition including members of Noah's Ark Ministries International found an unusual cave with fossilized wooden walls on Mount Ararat, well above the vegetation line. The sample was declared by the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Hong Kong to be petrified wood of the Cyprus variety.
- In 2010, Noah's Ark Ministries International l (NAMI) released videos of their discovery of the wood structures. Members of Noah's Ark Ministries International reported carbon dating suggests the wood is approximately 4,800 years old. It is unlikely that there was any human settlement at the site at altitude of 4,000 meters. Randall Price, a partner with Noah's Ark Ministries International from early 2008 to the summer of 2008, stated that the discovery was a probably the result of a hoax, perpetrated by ten Kurdish workers hired by the Turkish guide used by the Chinese, who planted large wood beams taken from an old structure near the Black SeaBlack SeaThe Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...
at the cave site. In a response to Price, Noah’s Ark Ministries International stated that they had terminated co-operation with Price in early October 2008, and that he had never been in the location of the wooden structure they identified, and regretted his absence in their find. On their website they say they asked for the opinion of Mr. Muhsin Bulut, the Director of Cultural Ministries, Agri Province. The web site says that his response was that secretly transporting such an amount of timber to the strictly monitored area and planting a large wood structure at an altitude of 4,000 meters would have been impossible. At the end of April 2010, it was reported that Turkey's culture minister ordered a probe into how NAMI brought its pieces of wood samples from Turkey to China.
Unsubstantiated claims
- According to one story, Nicholas II of RussiaNicholas II of RussiaNicholas II was the last Emperor of Russia, Grand Prince of Finland, and titular King of Poland. His official short title was Nicholas II, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias and he is known as Saint Nicholas the Passion-Bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church.Nicholas II ruled from 1894 until...
sent an expedition to Mount Ararat in 1916-1918 to investigate the Ark. The fact that Nicholas abdicated during the February RevolutionFebruary RevolutionThe February Revolution of 1917 was the first of two revolutions in Russia in 1917. Centered around the then capital Petrograd in March . Its immediate result was the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II, the end of the Romanov dynasty, and the end of the Russian Empire...
at the beginning of March 1917 (Gregorian calendarGregorian calendarThe Gregorian calendar, also known as the Western calendar, or Christian calendar, is the internationally accepted civil calendar. It was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII, after whom the calendar was named, by a decree signed on 24 February 1582, a papal bull known by its opening words Inter...
) makes the story unlikely. A few sources put the date of the expedition at 1916, ("the Russian imperial air forceImperial Russian Air ForceThe Imperial Russian Air Force existed in the Russian Empire between 1910 and 1917....
... is supposed to have sent 150 men up Mount Ararat in 1916 to explore a large object said to be as long as a city block", reads one). No records of such an expedition have yet come to light.
- On April 1, 1933, the Kölnische Illustrierte Zeitung of CologneCologneCologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...
published a story about an expedition sponsored by a Mrs. Putrid Lousey and including a "Prof. Mud" from "the Royal Yalevard University" in MassachusettsMassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, the other "Prof. Stoneass." The story was accompanied by pictures, including what looked like a giant boat on a mountainside and also flintlock weapons, presumably for the explorers' protection in the wilderness. On April 8, the paper admitted the article had been an April Fools Day hoax. Nevertheless, a refugeeRefugeeA refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
publication called Rubez adapted and published the story. In turn, a White RussiaBelarusBelarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
n refugee publication called Mech Gedeona ("Sword of Gideon"), ran a Russian-language version. The names became garbled in transliteration, but the same pictures were reprinted each time. In 1972, the Mech Gedeona article came into the hands of Charles Willis of Fresno, CaliforniaFresno, CaliforniaFresno is a city in central California, United States, the county seat of Fresno County. As of the 2010 census, the city's population was 510,365, making it the fifth largest city in California, the largest inland city in California, and the 34th largest in the nation...
, who provided it to two Ark-search enthusiasts, Eryl Cummings and his wife. John Bradley, another Ark searcher, quickly provided them with the original German text, but even after this, the Cummingses pursued for nearly four more months making sure that the joke names were mistranscriptions into German rather than a hoax.
- In 1955, French explorer, Fernand Navarra, reportedly found a 5-foot wooden beam on Mount Ararat some 40 feet under the Parrot Glacier on the northwest slope and well above the treeline. The Forestry Institute of Research and Experiments of the Ministry of Agriculture in Spain certified the wood to be about 5,000 years old – a claim that is disputed by Radio Carbon dating – two labs have dated the 1969 samples, one at 650 C.E. ± 50 years, the other at 630 C.E. ± 95 years. Navarra's guide later claimed the French explorer bought the beam from a nearby village and carried it up the mountain.
- In 1970 an Armenian, Georgie Hagopian, claimed to have visited the Ark twice around 1908/1910 (1902 in another version, and 1906 according to a segment in the TV series Unsolved MysteriesUnsolved MysteriesUnsolved Mysteries is an American television program, hosted by Robert Stack, from 1987 until 2002, and later by Dennis Farina, starting in 2008...
) with his uncle. Hagopian claimed that he had climbed up onto the Ark and walked along its roof and that some of his young friends had also seen it. The online archive of the old USENETUsenetUsenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
newsgroup talk.origins notes that "[t]he apparent ease of getting to the ark conflicts with the accounts of other explorers,"
- Ed Davis, a US army sergeant based at HamadanHamadan-Culture:Hamadan is home to many poets and cultural celebrities. The city is also said to be among the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities.Handicrafts: Hamadan has always been well known for handicrafts like leather, ceramic, and beautiful carpets....
in Iran during World War II, reported that he had climbed Mt. Ararat with his driver's family in 1943. After three days' climbing, the group camped 100 feet above the Ark and was able to look down into it but not to approach closely. According to Davis's description, it had broken into two pieces, which had been pushed some distance apart by glaciers. Its description roughly matched Hagopian's, judging by Elfred Lee's paintings. Lee also interviewed Ed Davis and created a painting based on Davis's descriptions. The structures in the paintings appear to match.
- In 1977, a documentary called "In Search of Noah's Ark" aired in theaters and on numerous television stations, claiming that the Ark had been found on Mt. Ararat; it was based on a book of the same title by David Balsiger and Charles Sellier, Jr. published in 1976. The entire movie is on Godtube, Google, and YouTube.
- In 1993, CBSCBSCBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
aired a television special entitled "The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark," which contained a section devoted to the claims of George Jammal, who showed what he called "sacred wood from the ark." Jammal's story of a dramatic mountain expedition which took the life of "his Polish friend Vladimir" was actually a deliberate hoax, and Jammal - who was really an actor - later revealed that his "sacred wood" was wood taken from railroad tracks in Long Beach, CaliforniaLong Beach, CaliforniaLong Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California. As of 2010, its population was 462,257...
and hardened by cooking with various sauces in an oven.
See also
- Mount AraratMount AraratMount Ararat is a snow-capped, dormant volcanic cone in Turkey. It has two peaks: Greater Ararat and Lesser Ararat .The Ararat massif is about in diameter...
- Ararat anomalyArarat anomalyThe Ararat anomaly is an object appearing on photographs of the snowfields near the summit of Mount Ararat, Turkey and advanced by some Christian believers as the remains of Noah's Ark.-Overview:...
- Durupınar site
- CreationismCreationismCreationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...
- David FasoldDavid FasoldDavid Franklin Fasold was a former United States Merchant Marine officer and salvage expert who is best known for his book The Ark of Noah, chronicling his early expeditions to the Durupınar Noah's Ark site in eastern Turkey...
- Deluge (mythology)
- Flood geologyFlood geologyFlood geology is the interpretation of the geological history of the Earth in terms of the global flood described in Genesis 6–9. Similar views played a part in the early development of the science of geology, even after the Biblical chronology had been rejected by geologists in favour of an...
- Gilgamesh flood mythGilgamesh flood mythThe Gilgamesh flood myth is a deluge story in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Many scholars believe that the flood myth was added to Tablet XI in the "standard version" of the Gilgamesh Epic by an editor who utilized the flood story from the Epic of Atrahasis...
- PareidoliaPareidoliaPareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse...
Further reading
- Cummings, Violet M., Noah's Ark: Fable or Fact?, (1972) ISBN 0-8007-8183-X
External links
- http://www.tv.com/unsolved-mysteries/episode-180/episode/174227/summary.htmlUnsolved MysteriesUnsolved MysteriesUnsolved Mysteries is an American television program, hosted by Robert Stack, from 1987 until 2002, and later by Dennis Farina, starting in 2008...
] (NBC), April 29, 1992. - Photographs of "Durupinar": aerial and ground level
- The Skeptics' Dictionary
- Index to Creationist Claims
- Bosch Hieronymus Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat Oil Painting - Master Works Art Gallery
- Noah's Ark Discovered in Iran? from National Geographic News of July, 2006
- http://viewzone2.com/noahx.html
