Noah’s Ark Discovered?

Last updated on: April 27, 2010 at 9:05 pm by Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Noah’s Ark Discovered? 2010-04-27T21:05:00-05:00 Fr. Dwight Longenecker

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This article reports that an Evangelical archeology unit has claimed to discover Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat. I can remember as a fundamentalist young person being intrigued by the steady stream of books and articles by various Indiana Jones type Evangelical Bible Christians who claimed that Noah’s Ark was still on the mountain. There was the mysterious photograph taken by a Russian air force pilot showing a boat like object sticking out of a glacier on Mt Ararat. We were told that it was impossible to gain access because Russia controlled this sensitive border area.

Then researchers in the 80s came up with a new location for the ark. It was this boat shaped geological structure in the mountains of Ararat called the Durupinar site, which they claimed was the fossilized remains of the ark. A famous documentary on the site seemed convincing. Now they’re doubtful.

It would certainly be interesting if the remains of a boat the size of the ark equipped with animal stalls were discovered on Mount Ararat. If such an artifact were discovered what would be the world’s response? Would the scholars suddenly re consider the historicity of the first twelve chapters of the Book of Genesis? Would the scientists tell us how the boat could have got up the mountain? How high would the water had have to have been?

When I was at Bob Jones University we were taught a totally alternative version of the origins of the earth. I believe it was called ‘young earth creationism’. They taught that the earth was only about 10,000 years old or so because that was the dating in the Old Testament. The evidence that said the earth was millions of years old was simply put there by God as ‘the illusion of age’. They reasoned that if God created Adam he would have created him as an adult therefore he also created the world to look older than it was. The trees, they said, would have been created with rings inside.

The curious thing about this is that they started with the ironclad belief that the first chapters of Genesis were literal historical truth so everything else then had to fit their theory. I guess that’s not a very way to do science.

But I’m not a scientist. I’m agnostic on the whole subject of creationism except that I know one thing–it didn’t happen by chance. God is the creator. Do we need to affirm more than that?

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