Category Archives: Locating

Old Ark Fraud Resurfaces

This headline worked and caught my attention:

Archaeologist Joel Klenck Reports Noah’s Ark Will Bring $38 Billion Dollars Per Year to the Turkish Economy or Marxist Terrorism

It is a fun press release with some substantial problems.

if the Turkish government does not guard the prehistoric barge on Mount Ararat, the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane (“PKK”), a violent Marxist organization, will find the structure, loot the artifacts worth at least $100 million dollars, supporting attacks against Turkey for several decades.

First of all, plenty of people have debunked the discovery. Only one person has allegedly seen the ark, and one of the photos provided as proof as identified as a known ancient site near where he lives.

Secondly, even if you were the purest of people, taking just one relic from the site, getting it authenticated, and selling it for “millions” would be an expected move.

Thirdly, if it had any chance of being real, a Turkish archaeologist would get in contact, get funds from the government, and take a look.

Lastly, the Mt Ararat of today wasn’t called Mt Ararat in biblical times. This is a rookie error.

This mountain was not called by the name Ararat until the Middle Ages; early Armenian historians considered the biblical Ararat to be in Corduene
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Ararat

 

 

Mount Ararat or Mount Judi?

mt_judi

My take is that the oldest source is the most trustworthy – unless a more recent source can disprove the earlier one.

Long before Christian traditions cited Mt Ararat as the landing place for Noah’s Ark, there was Mt Judi:

In the book, Antiquities of the JewsJosephus wrote:

the ark rested on the top of a certain mountain in Armenia … However, the Armenians call this place, αποβατηριον ‘The Place of Descent’; for the ark being saved in that place, its remains are shown there by the inhabitants to this day.

That was written in AD 93 or 94.

The identification of Mount Judi as the landing site of the ark persisted in Syriac and Armenian tradition throughout Late Antiquity but was abandoned for the tradition equating the biblical location with the highest mountain of the region, Mount Ararat.

It makes sense, given the enormity of the alleged flood, that the legend is changed so that the highest mountain in region becomes the official landing place.

The most ancient descriptions of the ark story come to us from (modern day) Iran. Mt Judi is far closer to Iran than Mt Ararat.