The Hong-Kong based organization Noah’s Ark Ministries International (NAMI) announced in April that they had discovered Noah’s Ark.  Their press release included brief video clips showing wooden beams of the alleged ark.  Yet many noted major problems with their purported discovery.  These suspicions appeared to be confirmed with the release two weeks ago of a letter written by two Turkish brothers who confessed to constructing “the ark” for what they thought was a movie set.

The latest turn in the saga is that NAMI has announced that the confession sent to Randall Price was forged.  They have a statement by the brothers claiming that they never wrote the letter.

A few observations:

1. An outside observer can hardly judge as to what the truth is with regard to the letter.  It’s certainly possible that someone forged the letter.  It should be noted that the letter is in Turkish, and since all “ark hunters” are outside Turkey, its creation would have required more than a casual effort.  It did strike me originally that the signatures appear to have been signed by the same person, though that might not be significant if one or both was illiterate.

2. NAMI clearly believes their reputation is on the line, as is apparent from the effort they have taken to refute the letter.  Their response is currently the front page on their website.

3. NAMI has spent a lot of money in their story and they expect to reap a fortune with the production of future “documentaries” and souvenirs.  An outside investigator would certainly want to consider the possibility that they invested additional money into the Turkish brothers so that they would deny
writing the letter.

4. Randall Price has removed the letter from his website “pending further investigation of its source.”  The Google-cached page still shows the letter and translation.  (Also here and here.)

5. NAMI essentially claims that Price forged the letter.  They write, “His actions have been completely against the basic principles of a true professing Christian and defying the law.”  Did he defy the law by attacking their work or by posting the letter?  Clearly they intend to suggest that he personally was involved in its forgery.  I believe that their charge is absolutely baseless, but they are now on record for recognizing the difference between truth and error as well as the judgment men face for their actions.

6. The determination that the letter is a forgery does not constitute evidence for the validity of the discovery.

In April an organization based in Hong Kong called a major press conference in which they announced that they had found Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey.  The announcement featured photos and videos showing well-preserved wooden beams that they claimed were from an ancient boat.

Everything about the announcement had a commercial feel and the sense I got was that they were looking to make a lot of money off of gullible believers.  A leader of the organization explained in one interview that a previous discovery of the Ark gave him faith and that didn’t change even when the find was revealed to be bogus.

As soon as the claim was made, many observed inconsistencies and problems in the report, some of which were described here and here.  Yesterday Randall Price posted a letter he received from two men who state that they were involved in constructing a movie set at the location of the discovery.  Only later did they find out that the film would be used as documentation of Noah’s Ark.

You can read the letter and its translation here.

HT: Daniel Wright

UPDATE: See follow-up post: Noah’s Ark Confession Repudiated.

Dutch scholar M. J. Paul has ten questions or concerns about the Hong King team’s alleged discovery of Noah’s Ark.  Here are a few:

2. Archaeologists are obliged to pinpoint exactly where they’ve found something, but these ‘discoverers’ keep their location secret though they do name Ararat. This makes control/checking impossible.
5. The wood is said to be tested in a laboratory in Iran, and estimated to be about 4800 years old. Does Iran actually have laboratories where one is skilled at determining this correctly? Why did this happen in Iran? And why aren’t the official ‘reports’ publicised so the results can be double-checked?
8. It induces distrust that the discoverers first want to make a film documentary before actual factual data is released and verified/reviewed.  When will the finds be presented on the normal way to the scientific community so that verification is possible?
9. One of the published photographs shows a spider web/cobweb in one of the corners. Is it possible for spiders to live at that height? Survive in that cold? Or did they photograph a cave positioned much lower than 4000m?

His complete list is here.

Regardless of whether one is knowledgeable about the living conditions of spiders, all should agree that the profit motive makes this endeavor suspicious from the beginning.  If this group is interested in truth, they should be seeking professional examination of their work.  As long as they refuse this while pursuing wide publicity and financial gain, their “discovery” should not be accepted.  Peter’s warning may apply here:

In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up (2 Peter 2:3).

There is of course another danger in all of this.  Repeated false discoveries of Noah’s Ark can lead some to deny that God ever destroyed the earth by flood, that this whole “ark” thing is a fiction.  If you doubt God did it before, you’re less likely to believe that he’ll do it again.  Peter sounds a warning in this regard as well:

You must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4 They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 5 But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6 By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed. 7 By the same word the present heavens and earth are reserved for fire, being kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
[…]
11 Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives 12 as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat (2 Peter 3:3-7, 11-12).

Bill Crouse and Gordon Franz have responded at length to the reported discovery of Noah’s Ark. 

They conclude:

There seems to be more than the usual gullibility here in that the Hong Kong group was warned about this local guide who has led others astray.  We say usual gullibility, because it seems to be a characteristic of other ark-hunters as well, in that they tend to believe all the local lore.  While many ark-hunters mean well, it seems that they want to believe every report seemingly at all costs; putting everything through a rational grid often is avoided as being too skeptical.
At this point we are skeptical of these new claims but would rejoice in the end if they proved to be true.  If this someday is the case we will be the first to apologize for our doubts. We would strongly urge the Hong Kong group to follow proper scholarly procedures and publish this material in scientific, peer-reviewed archaeological and geological publications so that the scholarly community can examine the material first hand and critique it in order to offer helpful, and constructive, criticism.  For the person in the pew, we caution you to not get too excited about something that is at best, unsubstantiated; and at worst, a fraud perpetrated by an enterprising local guide!

I don’t suppose it’s possible to stop ignorant and untrained people from searching for the ark, but one could wish that the news media would treat them in the same way that they would an accountant who claimed to have discovered the cure for cancer. 

The ASOR Blog has a run-down on rebuttals of the recent “discovery” of Noah’s Ark:

Tim Harrison on CTV: http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100429/noahs-ark-found-100429/20100429?hub=CanadaAMV2 Eric Cline on Fox News: http://video.foxnews.com/v/4171840/wheres-the-actual-site Eric Cline in Time Magazine:  http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1985830,00.html Robert Cargill at RobertCargill: http://robertcargill.com/2010/04/28/no-you-didnt-find-noahs-ark/

Present circumstances do not give me time to read, watch, or comment on these.