Quote:
Originally Posted by Campbell34
Well in reality, one would have to of deluded themselves into thinking, that numerous historical accounts do not exist.
275 BC Berossus stated that pilgrims went to the Ark to retrieve petrified pitch that covers it, and carve amulets.
30 BC Hieronymous speaks of the remains of Noah's Ark.
4th Century AD Faustus of Byzantius speaks of the bishop who went to the region of Gortouk to see the Ark of Noah.
1820 AD Claudius James Rich speaks of Aga Hussein who saw the remains of Noah's Ark.
1883 AD Turkish Commisioners report seeing the preserved but battered Ark of Noah. The locals stated that at the time, the Ark had been visible for six years. (Chicago Tribune, August 10, 1883).
1908 AD George Hagopian climbs Ararat with his uncle and sees the Ark of Noah.
1943 AD Ed Davis glimpes two sections of the broken Ark of Noah.
1968 David Duckworth states he saw ark artifacts that were sent back to the Smithsonian.
These are but a few of the historical accounts, and these accounts have nothing to do with what I have created in my own mind. Yet I would say, all such accounts you are dismissing from yours.
Consider the link below. Scroll to the right for the details.
http://noahsarksearch.com/Eyewitnesses.htm |
"According to Genesis 8:4, the Ark came to rest "in the mountains of Ararat." Early commentators such as Josephus, and authorities quoted by him, Berossus, Hieronymus the Egyptian, Mnaseas, and Nicolaus of Damascus, are unanimous that these "mountains of Ararat" are to be found in the region then known as Armenia, i.e. in the Armenian plateau of Eastern Anatolia. The specific mountain peak within Armenia is not indicated in Genesis.
Syrian and Armenian tradition of the early centuries AD had a tradition of the ark landing at Mount Judi, 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. The Mount Judi tradition in the 7th century also entered the Qur'an and thus Islamic tradition on the legend.
Rabbi Jonathan ben Uzziel (1st century), the Christian church fathers Hippolytus of Rome, Theophilus of Antioch (2nd century), Jerome and Epiphanius of Salamis (c. 400), and the Islamic authors al-Masudi (9th century) and Yaqut al-Hamawi (c. 1200) also stated that the Ark could still be seen in their respective times, in the mountains of Kardu or Kurdistan / Armenia, and Marco Polo mentioned hearing a similar report. Relics supposedly made of wood taken from the Ark site by Jacob of Nisibis were said to be found in St. Jacob's monastery (destroyed by an earthquake in 1840), and even to this day, in Etschmiadzin, Armenia.
The fact is that we don't know much about this other than claims." (wiki)
Perhaps you (since the subject interests you so much) can show where any of these actually saw something that looks like a huge boat stranded on Ararat or anywhere else.
You see, Campbell, it's like a lot of these claims for the Historicity of Jesus. It looks great when you give a list of names but when you look closer it turns out to be nothing much.
"The Byzantine emperor Heraclius is said to have made the trip in the 7th century". Just a claim.
"In the heart of Greater Armenia is a very high mountain shaped like a cube (or cup), on which Noah's ark is said to have rested, whence it is called the Mountain of Noah's Ark"
But no mention of anyone having found anything. And maybe that's not surprising.
"Not until the 19th century was the region settled enough, and welcoming enough for Westerners, to make it possible for significant expeditions to search for the Ark."
"In 1876, James Bryce, 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."
Interesting but the tre line isn't the snow line exactly and, even assuming that what he said was true, a slab of wood could have come from anywhere. We really do need a proper expedition paid for with creationist millions in order to find a proper hard site. You cannot toss these usupoorted claims at us and expect us to swallow it. You could do the same thing with all the bigfoot hoaxes.
Note this similar doubtful claim "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.[29] Navarra's guide later claimed the French explorer bought the beam from a nearby village and carried it up the mountain."
"In 1883, the British Prophetic Messenger and others reported that Turkish commissioners investigating avalanches had seen the Ark"
Again, just a claim, and hardly from a rigorously skeptic journal.
"Despite many rumours, claims of sightings and expeditions no scientific evidence of the ark has ever been found...The search for the ark has been called a "wild goose chase" by some archaeologists with one, Eric Cline, stating "These expeditions are a waste of time, energy, and money—all of which could be put to much better use by supporting existing scholarly excavations around the world."
"Former astronaut James Irwin led two expeditions to Ararat in the 1980s, was kidnapped once, and like others found no tangible evidence of the Ark. "I've done all I possibly can," he said, "but the Ark continues to elude us."
"By the beginning of the 21st century, two main candidates for exploration had emerged: the so-called Ararat anomaly near the main summit of Ararat (an "anomaly" in that it shows on aerial and satellite images as a dark blemish on the snow and ice of the peak), and the separate site at Durupınar near Dogubayazit, 18 miles (29 km) south of the Greater Ararat summit. The Durupınar site was heavily promoted by adventurer and former nurse-anaesthetist Ron Wyatt in the 1980s and 1990s, and consists of a large boat-shaped formation jutting out of the earth and rock. It has the advantage over the Great Ararat site of being approachable—while hardly a major tourist attraction, it receives a steady stream of visitors, and the local authorities claimed that a nearby mountain is called "Mount Cudi" (or Judi), making it one of about five Mount Judis in the land of Kurdistan. Geologists have identified the Durupınar site as a natural formation,[10] but Wyatt's Ark Discovery Institute continues to champion its claims"
I think I am correct in saying that this is the site you don't accept.
"In June 2006, Bob Cornuke of the Bible Archeology Search and Exploration Institute took a team of 14 American "business, law, and ministry leaders" to Iran to visit a site in the Alborz Mountains, purported to be a possible resting place of the Ark. The team did not include any archaeologists or geologists among its members. 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 long), and supposedly consistent with the dimensions provided in Genesis of 300 cubits by 50 cubits.[14] The team also claimed to have found fossilised sea creatures inside the petrified wood, and in the immediate vicinity of the site.[15] 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,[16] 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).[17] The team's consensus on the "object" is not absolute; Reg Lyle, another expedition member, described the find as appearing to be "a basalt ****".[15] It is the official position of the BASE Institute that Iran was the logical resting place of the Ark.[18] Their website does not definitely claim the object to be the Ark, but concludes that it is "a candidate".
I gather this might be the one you favour. I might remark that two sites you references showed this interesting site with apparent beams sticking up and the other looked nothing like it. So we conclude there is a discrepancy.
"David Duckworth, [26] allegedly a volunteer with the Smithsonian, claimed to have seen photographs of the Ark and crates of artifacts being unloaded from a National Geographic expedition in 1968."
Does the Smithsonian confirn this? No mention of it on their website. Does the National Geographic confirm it?
"George Stephen III, a military-trained, remote-sensing photo interpreter, who concluded after studying official satellite images of Mt. Ararat that "there's two large, man-made objects up there on the north side of the mountain … not metal and it's not rock [but] perhaps wood" – one at 16,000' and the other at 14,800'."
Searching for Noah's Ark by Bruce L. Gerig
That's interesting, because I didn't realize that one was more than 1,000 feet down the slope from the other. The idea that comes to mind is a block of ice sliding down and leaving the reported 'trail'. But that doesn't fit the timber - beams which resembles a whle boat, not one having broken in two and one half having slid down the slope.
This site probably renders further comment pointless.
BSMRA: Noah's Ark and Mt. Ararat Investigations
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) of the devil, as currently your post is #666 in this thread 
