[freeztar]

If you haven't seen the news, a group from China has claimed to found a piece of Noah's Ark.

noah's ark - Google Search

For those more inclined towards history and theology than I, what are your thoughts on this?
Is it another spoof or is there validity? The carbon dating shows that it is 4800 years old. Does this match up well with biblical accounts, timewise? Does it matter?

[Buffy]

"They have not released too many details..."

Okay they find something that "looks like a hut" on a mountain that's got thousands of years of perma-snow rapidly melting off of it due to global warming (cf. Mount Kilimanjaro), thus exposing all kinds of stuff that's just about the right age, in a location that was quite literally the cross-roads of the ancient world, and this is somehow supposed to be explainable by no other theory than it's "Noah's Ark?"

I guess that in this day and age of there-is-no-truth-only-he-said-and-she-said journalism that having even an ounce of sense published on the topic is a forlorn hope.....

You bluffed me! I don't like it when people bluff me. It makes me question my perception of reality,
Buffy

[coldcreation]

It sounds like another snow-job to me. Kind of like when Atlantis was "discovered" (over and over again).

There were previous claims that Noah's Ark had been discovered. Here's is but one, in Turkey:

Quote

While routinely examining aerial photos of his country, a Turkish army captain suddenly gaped a picture... There, on a mountain 20 miles south of Mt. Ararat, the biblical landfall of Noah's Ark, was a boat-shaped form about 500-515 feet long. The captain passed on the word. Soon an expedition including American scientists set out for the site.

At 7,000 feet, in the midst of crevasses and landslide debris, the explorers found a clear, grassy area shaped like a ship and rimmed with steep, packed-earth sides. Its dimensions are close to those given in Genesis: 'The length of the ark shall be 300 cubits, the breadth of it 50 cubits, and the height of it 30 cubits,' that is, 450x75x45 feet. A quick two-day survey was made. A scientist in the group says "a ship-like object that has almost unbroken symmetry." Source

See the video: Noah's Ark



I'm still waiting for the 'real' discovery of Adam and Eve's fossil remnants.

Quote

Adam, Eve, and the Hominid Fossil Record: ...Early Origin, envisions Adam and Eve living about 40,000 years ago, in the time of the Upper Paleolithic cultural explosion when culture "took off" and when Homo sapiens began to fashion much more sophisticated stone tools and began to practice ritual burial of the dead. The writer of Genesis is describing an actual historical event -- the creation of the first creatures who were fully human. Adam and Eve were the first to have fully human brains.

CC

[Ludwik]

freeztar, on 28 April 2010 - 06:11 PM, said:

If you haven't seen the news, a group from China has claimed to found a piece of Noah's Ark.

noah's ark - Google Search

For those more inclined towards history and theology than I, what are your thoughts on this?
Is it another spoof or is there validity? The carbon dating shows that it is 4800 years old. Does this match up well with biblical accounts, timewise? Does it matter?

Yes, the age of several thousand years is highly suitable for the C-14 method. We would hear more about this by now, if the claim were confirmed.

Ludwik Kowalski
.

[Mr. Scientistic]

Interesting, they said that they will put it in a museum or something, not so sure about that. But I need to confirm if they really gonna put it in a museum.

[charles brough]

Buffy, on 28 April 2010 - 06:41 PM, said:

"They have not released too many details..."

Okay they find something that "looks like a hut" on a mountain that's got thousands of years of perma-snow rapidly melting off of it due to global warming (cf. Mount Kilimanjaro), thus exposing all kinds of stuff that's just about the right age, in a location that was quite literally the cross-roads of the ancient world, and this is somehow supposed to be explainable by no other theory than it's "Noah's Ark?"

I guess that in this day and age of there-is-no-truth-only-he-said-and-she-said journalism that having even an ounce of sense published on the topic is a forlorn hope.....

You bluffed me! I don't like it when people bluff me. It makes me question my perception of reality,
Buffy

Yes, science publications and science TV changels will deliberately sensationalize (distort) by implying or asking questions that sensationalize it. After all, they take advertising also and advertisers pay more for magazines and shows that are more popular.

And lets face it: we who responded to this post were suckered into it too! We would not have bothered had the title only been that "an old piece of wood was found!"

[dduckwessel]

And I thought the Ark rested on top of Mt. Ararat, frozen in ice:

"And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat." (Genesis 8:4)



http://noahsarksearch.com/ararat.htm

[CraigD]

dduckwessel, on 04 April 2011 - 07:04 AM, said:

And I thought the Ark rested on top of Mt. Ararat, frozen in ice:

"And the ark rested in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, upon the mountains of Ararat." (Genesis 8:4)

Notice the plural "mountains" in the Torah verse, vs. the singular "mount" for the twin tall (5137 and 3896 m ASL at N 39 42 E 44 18) volcanic peaks in present day eastern Turkey known since around 900 BC as Mt. Ararat (though occasionally renamed by whoever lived in that region at the time).

It’s unlikely that the original (perhaps as ancient as 3500 BC) storytellers or the likely 500-200 BC writers of Genesis were referring to Mt. Ararat with the phrase, "the mountains of Ararat". "Ararat" was and is a fairly common name for middle eastern people and places, so they may have been referring to one of many mountainous regions in the Persian (Achaemenid) empire of that period. The earliest Jewish documents relating the Genesis text to a contemporary location place the mountains about 310 km southwest at the lower elevation (2089 m at N 37 22 E 42 21) Mt Judi. The prolific ca. 50 AD Jewish-Roman historian Josephus identified it as present day Mt. Ararat, though, an interpretation that in the Western/Christian tradition, has stuck ‘til nearly this day. The Eastern/Islamic tradition still places it at Mt Judi. (sources from the wikipedia article Mountains of Ararat)

Paleoanthropologists who have attempted to relate the Genesis story with actual catastrophic floods that ancient people of the area might remember have offered various hypotheses. My favorite is that the story comes down from prehistoric tales remembering the flooding of the Black Sea via the Bosphorus straight ca. 5600 BC, which would place events at anywhere from about 1300 km or so west, at N 41 3 E 29 2, to anywhere along the pre-5600 BC Black Sea coast.

[dduckwessel]

CraigD, on 05 April 2011 - 06:58 AM, said:

Notice the plural "mountains" in the Torah verse

Good point, I completely missed it. I know the ark was supposed to be BIG but it wasn't that big that it would cover mountains(s)?

Quote

It’s unlikely that the original (perhaps as ancient as 3500 BC) storytellers or the likely 500-200 BC writers of Genesis were referring to Mt. Ararat with the phrase, "the mountains of Ararat". "Ararat" was and is a fairly common name for middle eastern people and places, so they may have been referring to one of many mountainous regions in the Persian (Achaemenid) empire of that period.

You're right, I should have seen it as it's clarified here:

"Set ye up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations, prepare the nations against her, call together against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Minni, and Ashchenaz..." (Jer. 51:27)

Therefore, the interpretations of mountains of Ararat really means, "And the ark came to rest in the top of the kingdoms of Ararat".

Geological evidence states emphatically that a global flood never happened. It makes me personally think that Noah's Ark was not what has always been thought. Rather it was a model of the 'Ark of the Covenant' because in Gen. 7:16 says, "And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as God had commanded him: and the LORD shut him in."

The Lord shut him in, meaning, the Lord shut Noah in, but why doesn't it mention the others of Noah's family? If it was by Noah's faith alone that they were saved, then it makes sense but what does it mean 'the Lord shut him in'? It doesn't appear to be related to the Ark, as in 'the closing the door' because Noah and his family would have closed the door just as they had built the ark.

As strange as it may sound I think the waters were not physical (because of geologic data) but that the 'Ark of the Convenant' had transported them to Paradise.

Quote

The earliest Jewish documents relating the Genesis text to a contemporary location place the mountains about 310 km southwest at the lower elevation (2089 m at N 37 22 E 42 21) Mt Judi. The prolific ca. 50 AD Jewish-Roman historian Josephus identified it as present day Mt. Ararat, though, an interpretation that in the Western/Christian tradition, has stuck ‘til nearly this day. The Eastern/Islamic tradition still places it at Mt Judi. (sources from the wikipedia article Mountains of Ararat)

Again, if it was a geographic place it would have used the singular, mountain!

Is there a midrash about this topic?

Quote

Paleoanthropologists who have attempted to relate the Genesis story with actual catastrophic floods that ancient people of the area might remember have offered various hypotheses. My favorite is that the story comes down from prehistoric tales remembering the flooding of the Black Sea via the Bosphorus straight ca. 5600 BC, which would place events at anywhere from about 1300 km or so west, at N 41 3 E 29 2, to anywhere along the pre-5600 BC Black Sea coast.

Again, I don't think it was a geolgical catastrophe. If, as I believe the story is figurative then something extraordinary happened to Noah, his family and the animals in the ark.

[SextonBlake]

Noah's Ark? Doh!

On the BBC Christian Topic (now closed) we had a 15,000+ post thread and a 5,000+ post thread where all aspects of the Noah myth was destroyed many times over, and none of the christians there (that believed in it, some don't) could come up with any valid ideas to support it.

[Moontanman]

Noah's Ark, in the history forum? Really? REALLY? REALLY? At the very least put it in the religion forum or better yet in the trash were it belongs...

[Rade]

Let us assume the story is to be treated as history, as an event to be logically analyzed. Then it means that the flood event occurred 4800 years ago based on carbon dating of the wood [well that is what is claimed in OP], so, 4800-2011 = 2789 BC. This is not all that long ago. One way to falsify this specific historic Noah claim is to find a reference in ancient literature of a rainbow in some text before 2789 BC. Does anyone know of such ?

This type of historical falsification is possible because in the Noah story is the claim that God created the first rainbow visible to humans after the flood event (as a way to say sorry for killing 99.99...% of all humans on the earth during the flood). This means that no rainbows were visible to any humans prior to 2789 BC [or whenever the flood event occurred], a claim in complete violation of all known laws of physics.

Of course it is God we are talking about, and God could will that laws of physics be violated such that humans could not perceive a rainbow that was present. But, I find this to be such a sad explanation, that our ancient human ancestors such as Adam and Eve and Moses and many others never experienced the mental joy of the rainbow.