Richard Lanser
The accompanying article by Crouse and Franz is a fascinating compilation of historical data regarding proposed locations for Noah’s Ark. Taken together, those records present a reasonable case for giving credence to the Mt. Cudi site near Cizre, Turkey. However, not all agree it is a “compelling” one. In the interest of completeness, it is appropriate to mention some of the difficulties with the Mt. Cudi idea that do not appear to have yet been resolved, and which point to a continuing need to consider that the remains of the Ark are on Mt. Ararat in Turkey.
The Eyewitnesses
All agree that the most obvious point in favor of Mt. Ararat is the eyewitness testimonies. In contrast, the historical material we have from antiquity supporting the Mt. Cudi site is, at best, secondhand, and should not be given the same weight as the firsthand testimonies we have regarding Mt. Ararat. While admitting the force of the argument that many of the alleged Ararat eyewitness stories are open to serious doubt—whether due to the questionable reliability of the witnesses, their stories being plagued, as Crouse and Franz put it, by “lost documents, lost photos, and lost witnesses,” or the possibility they saw “phantom arks” from aircraft which were nothing but rock formations—it must be pointed out that, according to Scripture, it only takes two or three trustworthy witnesses to make a case (Dt 17:6, Dt 19:15, Mt 18:16, 2 Cor 13:1). In the testimonies of Armenian George Hagopian (c. 1904–1906) and American Sergeant Ed Davis (1943) this requirement is met.1 They did not know each other and were widely separated by time and cultural background, so the amazing similarities between their stories buttress their credibility. In rejecting many alleged eyewitnesses for various reasons, we must not be guilty of “throwing out the baby with the bathwater” by lumping the more solid stories with the dubious.
These men made their sightings on the ground, hence are not open to the charge of merely seeing rocks from the air and misinterpreting them. Hagopian not only claimed to have seen the Ark twice in the early 1900s, but to even have climbed onto it! Davis likewise claimed to have been in such close proximity to the Ark that it is not plausible to say he only saw a huge rock structure. There is no middle ground that allows anyone to claim
Mount Ararat from space. Note the clear evidence of volcanic activity, a reason to consider the Ark was buried in ash for centuries, and helping to explain the silence of the historical record.
NASA
these men simply made a mistake. We have only two options: either they saw the Ark, or they were lying.
The problem with the latter option is that their reputations were checked out by Ark researchers concerned with the possibility of fraud, and they were found to be sober, apparently honest men who were not “out to make a buck.” In the case of Davis, he passed a lie detector test that closely scrutinized the details of his Ark sighting (Corbin 1999: 108–110). Notwithstanding this, some suppose that a few seeming inconsistencies that came out during multiple retellings of his story point to its fundamental unreliability. I disagree. With the passage of time or under stress, people remember or forget various minor details or emphasize them differently, without thereby changing their fundamental story. I believe this is the case with Ed Davis. Though we can nitpick at some of the details, his central story, which allowed him to pass the lie detector test, remained the rock-solid core that we cannot ignore.
It is worth reviewing the Davis lie detector test in some detail. The following is a quote regarding the polygraph test administered to Ed Davis (Corbin 1999: 109):
Subject was asked to recall in detail what his recollection of the incident was. His answer was as follows: While this subject was in the U.S. Army and assigned to engineering duties between Iran, Turkey and USSR he met a male later identified as Abas-Abas. Subject stated that Abas’ son was working for the government at the time of this meeting. As the subject related the story, Mr. Davis did a great favor for Abas and his tribe.
As a result of this favor Abas was asked by Davis to tell him (Davis) about the Ark or structure that was located somewhere around Mt. Ararat. Davis was told that if the weather was right he (Abas) would take him to see this structure. Some time later Abas and seven (7) of his sons escorted Davis to the site of the structure.
In trying to solicit the information from Mr. Davis the following questions were asked:
1. Are you lying when you state that you were taken to Mt. Ararat by Abas and his seven sons?
2. Are you lying when you state that you climbed Mt. Ararat on horseback and on foot?
3. Are you lying when you state that the object you saw was broken in half?
4. Are you lying when you state that the structure was exposed between 100 and 200 feet?
5. Are you lying when you state that you saw a large wooden structure high on Mount Ararat?
6. Are you lying when you state that no one ever told you about the Ark other than Abas and the Bible?
Mr. Davis answered all of the above questions with NO. After careful analysis of all this subject’s Polygrams it is the opinion of the examiner that he answered without showing any stress to questions 1–5. Regarding question 6, the subject did show
BSpade 19:4 (Fall 2006) p. 115
Elfred Lee – www.noahsarksearch.com
George Hagopian and Elfred Lee with painting done by Lee.
stress and answered that he has talked to a number of people about the Ark. He also stated that not one of the people that he has spoken to have ever seen or known the exact location of where the Ark is.
My point in quoting the above passage is to make clear that there were six distinct questions asked during the polygraph, and fully half of them specifically mentioned Mt. Ararat. The only question Davis displayed any tension in answering was the last one. This is a patently insufficient reason for disregarding the entire testimony. Davis knew where he went and what he had seen and experienced, regardless of any apparent ambiguity that may have arisen as he retold his story at different times.
George Hagopian likewise was found to be a reliable witness. Elfred Lee, a researcher who later also interviewed Davis and marveled at the many points of contact between the two accounts, personally checked out Hagopian’s story and found that obscure details about his childhood around Lake Van in Armenia held up, greatly enhancing the credibility of his admittedly incredible Ark tale (Corbin 1999: 69, 72). Lee also affirmed that Hagopian, like Davis, took and passed a lie detector test (Corbin 1999: 79).
These two testimonies, at the very least, cannot be lumped with the less well-attested ones and rejected out of hand. They are important parts of the overall picture of the search for the Ark, and can be neither ignored nor easily explained away.
Hidden from the Air
If we do have some reliable eyewitnesses, then how do we deal with the valid observation of Crouse and Franz, “no ‘undeniable evidence’ for the Ark on Ararat has been turned up over the past 50 years of air searches?” Based on geographic clues in their testimonies, it appears that if the Ark is on Mt. Ararat, it is in a high, inaccessible location on the north side above the Ahora Gorge, most likely nestled in a small valley within the “saddle” between the two peaks of Greater Ararat and generally blanketed in snow and ice.2 Hagopian’s first sighting came after four years of drought conditions in the Ararat region (Corbin 1999: 67, 79), a fact attested to by climate records (Corbin 1999: 372; Shockey 1986: 33–34). Moreover, Hagopian indicated it was only exposed every 20 years or so (Corbin 1999: 75, 370). Further, even granting adequate meltback, the Ark’s visibility from the air is dependent on such conditions as the angle of the sun and cloud cover; a little shadow or cloudiness goes a long way toward obscuring things when air searches are attempted. All of these are reasonable explanations for the lack of success in spotting the Ark on Ararat from the air during the past 50 years.
The Big Switch
The principle reason historians tend to reject Mt. Ararat as the Mountain of the Ark lies in the silence of the early historical records. As Crouse and Franz have abundantly documented, in contrast to the early records apparently supporting Mt. Cudi as the Ark site, there appear to be no extant writings prior to Philostorgius (fifth century AD) clearly tying Mt. Ararat to the Ark. Unambiguous references to Ararat remain hard to come by until about the 13th century, when Mt. Cudi appears to basically have been supplanted by Mt. Ararat in the tradition. The big question to ask is, why did this transfer take place at all? If the Ark was ever on Mt. Cudi, what prompted the switch to Ararat? In the absence of more complete ancient records there are no easy answers, but certain facts can be adduced to explain such a change.
The first is that Mt. Ararat is a volcanic peak. Satellite photos show the magma flows that form its base very clearly, and blocks of volcanic basalt are all over its slopes. Armenian scholar Robert Bedrosian (1993) notes that during the third through first millennia BC, Mt. Ararat was “among the more prominent volcanoes spewing molten lava and rocks into the night sky.” This means it is likely in the extreme that had the Ark landed there, it would rather quickly have been covered in volcanic ash. If we make the entirely reasonable assumption that Noah and his family would not long have stayed in the vicinity of an active volcano but would have moved off to friendlier environs, we are looking, at a very early point in human history, at the Ark being both entirely hidden from sight by snow and ice and/or volcanic ash, and in an area away from where people would want to live. The story of the Ark and its location would logically have quickly entered the realm of legend, because none would have been able to simply climb the peak and check it out. The power of the legend, however, would have sufficed to ensure its survival, with the story being passed down from one generation to another while the location eventually morphed in the retelling to another site. This observation also accounts for the phenomenon of multiple Mt. Cudis (Geissler n.d.)—the one near Cizre that Dr. Bender investigated, another near Sanli Urfa, yet a third in Arabia, one of the peaks of Ararat itself (Cummings 1973: 167–79), and even the Durupinar site popularized by Ron Wyatt.
An additional factor to consider is the post-Flood climate. Meteorologist Michael Oard constructed an eminently logical
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Elfred Lee – www.noahsarksearch.com
Ed Davis and Elfred Lee drawing his account at the New Mexico “Ark-a-thon” in 1986.
case for the Ice Age being tied to warmer oceans after the Flood, resulting in copious snowfalls in the more northern and southern latitudes, with associated rapid formation of glaciers and deep icepacks in the mountains (Oard 1990). Ararat today has a permanent snowline beginning at about 14,000 ft, and it makes sense that during the Ice Age the snowline would have been much lower. The Ark would thus have been hidden under deep snowdrifts as well as ash. It is therefore not surprising that there are no surviving writings from hoary antiquity tying the Ark to Mt. Ararat; by the time people developed the degree of civilization required to write lasting records about it, it was deeply buried, out of sight and out of mind.
These two considerations allow us to make a reasonable conjecture as to how the Ark landing tradition became attached to Mt. Cudi. With the establishment of civilization in Shinar— the same civilization, we note, that gave us the Gilgamesh Epic, a corrupted version of the Flood story—it is no real stretch to say that just as Gilgamesh replaced Noah in the Sumerian version, so Mt. Cudi replaced the inaccessible Mt. Ararat as the site of the Ark. Mt. Cudi is, after all, directly north of the plain of Shinar, and would have provided a convenient nearby locale to connect with the tradition.
The flip side of the above scenario is that it can also explain why Mt. Ararat had the power to supplant the Mt. Cudi tradition around the 13th century, after the former had already had hundreds of years to take root: it was based on demonstrable fact, not mere tradition. Facts trump “just-so” stories anytime! Just a few visits to the Real Thing, confirmed by others who could check it out for themselves, would quickly have solidified the claims of the relative “newcomer” to being the genuine location.
Geological Considerations
One point Crouse and Franz make in rejecting Mt. Ararat as the location of the Ark is the alleged lack of water-borne sedimentary rock, indicating a post-Flood origin of the volcano. If Ararat did not exist during the Flood, it follows that it could not have provided an anchorage for the Ark. However, the old saw, “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” needs to be considered here.
If Ararat existed before the Flood, it must be recognized that its steep-sloped form, subjected to erosion by rainstorms and melting snow over the centuries, cannot be expected to have retained sedimentary deposits on its slopes to the same degree as less inclined areas. (Think of the catastrophic mudslides in Honduras and Nicaragua due to Hurricane Mitch in 1998.) Unconsolidated sediments would be expected to wash off the slopes in heavy rains; mudslides would have taken place. The immediate area around Mt. Ararat is not a friendly one for the development of deep-rooted grasses, brush and protective trees that would aid in retaining soil. And if one further considers that there were magma flows at various times—particularly evident when one looks at satellite pictures of Mt. Ararat—there is also the distinct possibility that sedimentary rock layers could have been buried under volcanic material.
Another option is that Mt. Ararat initially arose during the Flood itself, and did not exist during the antediluvian age. In a letter published in TJ, Max Hunter pointed out that
If Mount Ararat was erected as a submarine stratovolcano then it would be highly unlikely that conditions on the sloping sides of the active volcano would be conducive to the preservation of ‘diluvium’ (‘coarse superficial accumulations…glacial and fluvio-glacial deposits of the Ice Age’) or fossils (Hunter 2003: 62).
Hunter further noted that “basaltic lavas, the most common lithology in the Ararat area, commonly occur in sub-aqueous environments…” and went on to list several specific rock types that demonstrate why the geology around Mount Ararat fits well with a submarine origin of the volcano.
Although it is clear that further research needs to be done, at least one credentialed geologist, Dr. Clifford Burdick, concluded that there were sufficient indications to conclude that Ararat had been under water at some point in its history (Burdick 1967).3 He made observations as a consulting geologist on exploratory expeditions to Mount Ararat in 1966 and 1969, and reported that every sample of volcanic rock he examined on the mountain evidenced high glass content, indicating that Mt. Ararat was submerged in water at least up to the 14,000-foot level. He also claimed to have found deposits of sedimentary rocks at 13, 500 ft, and evidence of water-formed “pillow lava” at around 14, 000 ft. The last observation is somewhat controversial because magma released under ice and snow will have the same characteristics as that extruded underwater, so this should not be given undue weight. However, Burdick also found cube-shaped salt clusters “as large as grapefruit” near 7, 000 ft, which he attributed to “dense, lingering ocean waters,” as well as what are called “conglomerate cones” near 13, 000 ft, formed under pressure and a greater than normal degree of water agitation. The waters must also have remained for a long enough time for these structures to cool and fuse, consistent with the mountain having been submerged for a significant amount of time.
For the above reasons we cannot quickly dismiss Mt. Ararat on the basis that it lacks evidence of sedimentary rocks. While acknowledging the need for further fieldwork, there appear to be a sufficient variety of clues to say with reasonable confidence that Mt. Ararat could indeed have been submerged during the time of the Flood.
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Richard Lanser
French lithograph from 1848 showing the reputed Tomb of Noah at Nakhichevan. It apparently no longer exists.
Nearby Place Names and Traditions
A further reason for considering Mt. Ararat as the true Ark landing site is the meanings attached to place names in the immediate vicinity. For example, the city of Nakhichevan lies just a short distance away in the foothills of Ararat as one follows the Araxes River eastward. There are varying interpretations of what the name means. Some say it means, in the Armenian language, “the place of first descent,” and connects to Noah as the place where he first went after descending from the Ark on Ararat’s slopes (Kojian 2006); I personally find this interpretation makes the most sense. Others say the name comes from Nukkhtchikhan, meaning “colony of Noah,” and a third opinion is that it refers to the Ark itself “descending” in the water and glancing off the sub merged summit of Nakhichevan’s Ilan-dag (“Snake Mountain”) prior to finally coming to rest atop Turkey’s Mt. Ararat (Azerbaijan24.com, n.d.). Regardless of the precise meaning, this city has a clear and ancient tradition connecting it to Noah, and when one considers that a reputed Tomb of Noah existed there as recently as the 19th century, it presents a tantalizing hint about which direction Noah may have taken after leaving the Ark.
Other significant locations include the original village of Arghuri (Ahora) at the foot of Ararat, the name of which means “where Noah planted the grapevine” (cf. Gn 9:20).4 Near Nakhichevan in neighboring Iran is Marand—the Marunda of Ptolemy (in Armenian = “the mother is there”)—where tradition has it that Noah’s wife died and her bones were buried under a mosque. Granted that similar sites are said to exist near Mt. Cudi, it would be very troublesome to consider Mt. Ararat as a candidate if they did not exist nearby. That they do gives reason to continue to seriously consider the Ararat option.
Dealing with “From the East”
Genesis 11:2 can be interpreted in multiple ways. In the KJV it reads,
And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.
This seems to be the most straightforward translation, rendering the Hebrew word miqqedem as a combination of the Hebrew preposition min, “out of, away from,” with qedem, “front, east.” The ancient Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate translations opt for the “from the east” translation as well, increasing its credibility. Robert Cornuke adopts this translation likewise—but in his case, it seems to be an attempt to justify searching for the Ark on an Iranian mountain (Lanser 2006). Some would go so far as to say this verse indicates the Ark landed east of Shinar, but this is reading too much into the passage. It does not say that Noah and his family disembarked there and stayed put for a few hundred years. All we can safely draw from it is that the descendents of Noah, at some point in time, from wherever they may have gone in their journeyings earlier, at length moved from the east, from what today is Iran, into Mesopotamia.
There are other ways of translating miqqedem. The NIV chooses to render it as “eastward,” making the migration into Shinar from the west. The NEB chooses an indefinite yet still grammatically possible alternative, “in the east,” painting a picture of people moving to and fro, with no definite direction, prior to entering Shinar (although how such directionless movement can be said to be “journeying” anywhere—to take a journey seems to demand a destination—is unclear). Given that Mt. Cudi is directly north of the Mesopotamian plain and presents a location incompatible with either a westward or eastward migration, those holding to Mt. Cudi as the Mountain of the Ark appear to be forced to adopt the NEB’s indefinite directional translation of miqqedem, leaving them with little flexibility to accept the longstanding Septuagint, Vulgate and KJV translation, “from the east.”
The Bender Discovery
It remains to consider what to make of the discovery by Dr. Friedrich Bender of decayed wood and bitumen on Mt. Cudi. (see his article in this issue). Despite the erroneous dating assumption expressed in Bender’s article, this is a very significant find if it holds up and carries with it the potential to discredit Mt. Ararat as the real Ark site, despite all that has been said above. However, we must remember that Bender’s research was very limited, and further work such as core drilling must be done to bolster the case enough to overcome all of the factors that still favor Mt. Ararat. It is also not wise to place too much stock in the alleged 6500-year radiocarbon age of the wood remains found by Bender. The method was invented by Willard Libby in 1947, only a short time before Bender put the technology to use, and its limitations were not yet fully appreciated. For some of the limits of radiocarbon as a dating method, the reader is referred to Brown 2006.
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Phyllis Watson – www.noahsarksearch.com
Violet Cummings in Marand, Iran near Nakhichevan, at the mosque where the bones of Noah’s wife are said to be buried. Cummings was the wife of pioneering Ark researcher Eryl Cummings, and an accomplished researcher in her own right.
There are two alternative explanations I see to account for Bender’s findings apart from supposing it to be evidence of the Ark’s landing place. One is that since Mt. Cudi, at around 7000 ft in elevation, is not a very high mountain, there could have been ordinary structures built upon it in the past. Moreover, Bender’s wood remains were found only 750 m (2460 ft) above the rubble terraces of the plain, making it difficult to reconcile this location with Gn 8:4–5, that it took three full month after the Ark rested before “the top of the mountain became visible” (NASB). The wood remains may thus not indicate the former presence of the Ark, but rather a shrine— with its proximity to the Mesopotamian plain, Mt. Cudi could have been a “high place” of Nimrod/Semiramis cult worship—or some other structure, such as a defensive outpost. Since bitumen is common around Mesopotamia, its presence does not require us to imagine that it was necessarily derived from the Ark; it could have been used simply to waterproof walls or a roof. All things considered, we do not yet know enough to evaluate the significance of the Bender find.
In conclusion, while acknowledging the strength for the historical case in favor of Mt. Cudi, we must also admit that there are many observations that it does not satisfactorily explain, and which are more easily reconciled with Mt. Ararat in Turkey being the Mountain of the Ark.
Bibliography
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Tour to Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan, www.azerbaijan24.com/tours/nakhichevan_tour (accessed November 29, 2006).
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Brown, Walt
2006 How Accurate Is Radiocarbon Dating ? In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood (7th Edition), www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ2.html(ac-cessed November 29, 2006).
Bryce, James B.
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Corbin, B.J., ed.
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Kojian, Raffi
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Lanser, Richard D.
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Oard, Michael
1990 An Ice Age Caused by the Genesis Flood. El Cajon, CA: Institute for Creation Research.
Shockey, Don
1986 Agri-Dagh, Mount Ararat: The Painful Mountain. Fresno, CA: Pioneer Publishing Co.