Monday, February 02, 2009

New Search For Noah's Ark

Hope springs eternal! Randall Price, director of Liberty University's new Center for Judaic Studies is planning a trip up Mount Ararat in an attempt to find Noah's Ark. This, despite the fact that there isn't a bit of evidence that it is there, rather than somewhere else in the Taurus arc. Urartu is a big place, after all and the idea that the Ark is actually on Massis, itself, is an Armenian tradition and dates to around the second century A.D. Nevertheless, up they go.

This summer Price, 57, plans to continue on a journey to prove just that as he joins an expedition to Mount Ararat. His team believes that it is there, in Eastern Turkey, where Noah's Ark remains preserved underneath layers of rubble and ice.

"There's a whole trail of history pointing to it [Mt. Ararat]," Price said in a recent interview. "But in our age, people tend to think it is more of a story like Jack and the Bean Stalk.' Our aim is to show that the Bible is good history."

If, in fact, the Ark is up there, I am not sure how they are going to get it down. If, as many theologians believe, the Noah's Ark story and that of Utnapithim from the Gilgamesh epic draw from the same source, they are going to be searching a long time. The other side of the coin is, of course, that if it is up there, all of modern science is wrong. What are the odds?


4 comments:

  1. Anonymous9:13 PM

    The other side of the coin is, of course, that if it is up there, all of modern science is wrong.

    Hmmm. I'm guessing that even if there are the remains of a ship up there, modern science is still in pretty good shape. It would probably be easier to offer an explanation of such remains that fits into the broader story of science than to explain that story into the Noachic flood.

    Just sayin'.

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  2. Probably. It sure would stir the pot, though.

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  3. Anonymous9:05 PM

    If you had a great big block of pre-shapen wood hanging around, the whole of civilisation had been destroyed and you had to start from scratch... Would you just leave it there?
    I think it's kind of strange to believe it would be there, even if you do believe in everything literally.

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  4. Good point. The one that always gets me is that the Bible says that Noah coated the ark inside and out with pitch and yet pitch does not show up in the geological column until about a two-thirds of the way up. If the rock record were deposition from the flood, the pitch would be at the bottom. Details, details...

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