Almost every year since the first edition of this book appeared in spring 2007, amateur enthusiasts have claimed that they have discovered Noah’s ark (including Randall Price in 2009, a team from Hong Kong in 2010, and Daniel McGivern in 2011), only to be debunked or contested by scholars each time.
And it is not only Noah’s ark. People continue to search for the Ark of the Covenant and the Garden of Eden. As if this weren’t enough, enthusiasts have churned out additional pseudo-archaeological claims, documentaries, and books, including most notably the so-called Lost Tomb of Jesus, nails from the cross on which Jesus was crucified, and buried treasures of the Copper Scroll (not to mention competing claims for Atlantis in Spain and off the coast of Cyprus).
Pseudo-archaeology is alive and well. In fact, it is thriving. The television stations love the ratings that such shows draw, especially if the timing is right: The Lost Tomb of Jesus aired on the Discovery Channel a month before Easter in 2007, while “Nails of the Cross”—a segment from the Secrets of Christianity series—aired on the History Channel four days before Easter in 2011.
On the one hand, things have not changed much since this book was first published. Amateur enthusiasts and journalists are still convinced that they are able to find these artifacts and thereby solve some of the mysteries explored in this book. It seems that members of the general public also still like the stories of such searches, even if they don’t necessarily believe them. Of course, that’s not surprising. Who doesn’t like a good mystery? And who doesn’t like to follow along as someone tries to solve it?
However, such searches and attempts should have at least one foot in reality and should not be sensationalistic claims without any scientific research or rational logic behind them. And that is what has changed in the intervening years—at least some professional scholars and knowledgeable laypeople are no longer willing to remain silent when pseudoscientific and pseudo-archaeological claims are made. Rather than simply shrugging their collective shoulders and ignoring these claims, now they are responding immediately, to nip them in the bud.
The Internet in particular has proven to be a fast, effective means of immediately addressing such claims. The biggest impact has been made by knowledgeable bloggers, primarily scholars but also some well-informed laypeople. In particular, a group that has dubbed themselves “bibliobloggers” reacts almost instantaneously via the Internet to any story broadcast by the media. They have been able to disseminate accurate rebuttals and other information to the general public within hours or days regarding claims about topics as diverse as Noah’s ark, the treasures listed in the Copper Scroll from the Dead Sea caves, and lead codices from Jordan said to contain the earliest Christian writings, as opposed to publishing rebuttals in traditional scholarly venues that can take years to appear.
For instance, regarding the claim that 70 lead codices had been found in Jordan, which were said to date from the first century A.D. and to shed light on the last days of Jesus, postings by knowledgeable bibliobloggers showed within days that the claims, and the codices, were almost certainly fake. Other scholars wrote and published detailed articles and rebuttals on other topics, which appeared in a matter of days or weeks, rather than months and years, on Web sites such as the Bible and Interpretation Web site maintained by Mark Elliott and Patricia Landy.
But it has taken time and effort to get to this point. In the introduction to this book, I said that “while doing the research for this book, I became amazed and, frankly, appalled by the amount of pseudoscientific nonsense that has been published on these topics” (Noah’s ark, the Ark of the Covenant, and so on). Following the publication of the first edition and in the course of fielding numerous questions from listeners on radio talk shows and interested newspaper reporters, particularly about the claims made by amateur enthusiasts, my amazement and indignation continued to grow.
By the end of September 2007, six months after this book appeared, I had had enough. I published an op-ed in the Boston Globe that was subsequently reposted on Archaeology magazine’s Web site and elsewhere. Entitled “Raiders of the Faux Ark,” it was a call to arms for my scholarly colleagues to take up the battle, as well as a warning to the general public about what was going on. Near the beginning of the piece, I wrote:
We are living in a time of exciting discoveries in biblical archaeology. We are also living in a time of widespread biblical fraud, dubious science, and crackpot theorizing. Some of the highest-profile discoveries of the past several years are shadowed by accusations of forgery, such as the James Ossuary, which may or may not be the burial box of Jesus’ brother, as well as other supposed Bible-era findings such as the Jehoash Tablet and a small ivory pomegranate said to be from the time of Solomon. Every year “scientific” expeditions embark to look for Noah’s Ark, raising untold amounts of money from gullible believers who eagerly listen to tales spun by sincere amateurs or rapacious con men; it is not always easy to tell the two apart.
I went on to say that, unfortunately, when such fantastic claims are made, they have largely gone unchallenged by academics, whether archaeologists or biblical scholars. As a result, professional archaeologists and biblical scholars have allowed a public relations disaster to slowly unfold, for they have yielded their field to pseudoscientists, amateur enthusiasts, and irresponsible documentary filmmakers. But since I believe that the public deserves—and wants—better, I told my colleagues: “We have an obligation to challenge the lies and the hype, to share the real data, so that the public discussion can be an informed one. It is time we take back our field.”
I also asked why it is that we (i.e., academics) were sitting the battle out. I offered three reasons:
1. There is a strain of snobbery that runs through many academic fields and a suspicion of colleagues who venture too far from “serious” topics or who appear in the popular media too often.
2. The stories themselves are uncertain. Many biblical questions are so shrouded in uncertainty as to be inherently unsolvable. For example, even if the Garden of Eden once was a real place, and even if we knew the general location where it might have been, how would we know when we had found it? When most archaeologists and biblical scholars hear that someone has (yet again) discovered Noah’s ark, they roll their eyes and get on with their business. This can leave the impression that the report might be true.
3. Scientific findings may challenge religious dogma.
As I said in the op-ed, biblical scholarship is highly charged because the Bible is a religious book, and any research carries the prospect of “proving” or “disproving” treasured beliefs. What if the Exodus might not have taken place as described in the Bible? Similarly, what will people do when told that there are stories identical to that of Noah and the ark, but they were recorded between 500 and 1,000 years earlier, sans Noah? And that the flood was sent because the people were too noisy and the gods couldn’t sleep, not because people were evil and sinning? Or when you tell them that “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth” was a concept expressed in Hammurabi’s Law Code nearly 1,000 years before the Bible?
But we don’t need to go looking for Noah’s ark to find confirmation of details found in the Bible. During the past century or so, archaeologists have found the first mention of Israel outside the Bible, in an Egyptian inscription carved by the pharaoh Merneptah in the year 1207 B.C. They have found mentions of Israelite kings, including Omri, Ahab, and Jehu, in Neo-Assyrian inscriptions from the early first millennium B.C. And they have found, most recently, a mention of the “House of David” in an inscription from northern Israel dating to the ninth century B.C. These are conclusive pieces of evidence that these people and places did exist and that at least parts of the Bible are historically accurate. Perhaps none of these are as attention getting as finding Noah’s ark, but they serve to deepen our understanding of, and appreciation for, the Bible.
Moreover, religious archaeologists and secular archaeologists frequently work side by side in the Holy Land. Among the top ranks of researchers, there are evangelical Christians, orthodox Jews, and people of many denominations. It is not religious views that are the issue here; it is whether good science is being done. Biblical archaeology is a field in which people of good will and all religions can join under the banner of the scientific process.
Most archaeological organizations state that it is one of the obligations of professional archaeologists to make their findings and discoveries generally available. It is clear that we need to do more than simply publish research if we are to successfully counter junk science: We need to take our information to the public not only via writing but also via radio, television, film, and all other available media.
I ended my Boston Globe diatribe with some of the same words that I used to end this book: “Even when our own investigations come up empty—we can’t solve all the mysteries in the Bible—we can present the current state of our evidence. And we can promote a shared methodology, and a shared body of facts, that can be used by everyone. The data and opinions that we provide may not end any debates, but they will introduce genuine archaeological and historical data and considerations into the mix. We owe it to the ancient world, and to the people who inhabited it, to do no less.”
Thus, in the op-ed, as a direct outcome of writing this book and in the aftermath of its appearance, I called for archaeologists, and particularly biblical archaeologists, to “take back their field.” In the months that followed, I and a few others proceeded to try to do exactly that, by helping to organize sessions on the topic in 2008 and 2009 at the annual meetings of several professional organizations, including the American Schools of Oriental Research (ASOR, the group to which most American archaeologists who work in the Near East belong, including biblical archaeologists), the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA, the organization to which most American archaeologists working in Greece and Italy belong), and the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL, the professional organization for biblical scholars). There was also a stand-alone conference held at Duke University in April 2009, on “Archaeology, Politics, and the Media,” whose stated objective was “to outline better methods of communication between archaeologists, media representatives, and non-specialist audiences.”
The results so far have been good, as I stated in the paper that I gave at the Duke conference. For example, we decided that we needed to have professional archaeologists react promptly to claims by pseudo-archaeologists, amateur enthusiasts, and junk scientists. To that end, we set up a blog linked to the ASOR Web site that we are using, in part, as a means to respond to erroneous and extravagant claims reported by the media. A prime example is my February 2009 response, entitled “Adrift Again on Noah’s Ark,” to Randall Price’s claim a month previously to have found Noah’s ark. Price, an evangelical Christian archaeologist who is the executive director of the Center for Judaic Studies at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, stated that the location of Noah’s ark had been verified by a shepherd. According to Fox News, during a preliminary trip in late 2008, Price and his colleagues “found the spot … but it now is covered by an estimated 60-foot-deep pile of boulders.” We responded promptly to these claims, and engaged in an online conversation with Price, during which he attempted to justify and clarify his statements.
We also decided that there needed to be better communication between professional archaeologists and the media, in an effort to get better, or more accurate, stories written and produced. Therefore, we formed the ASOR Archaeology Media Relations Committee, with leading biblical archaeologists and other scholars participating, including a number of bloggers whose posts have proven quite influential, notably my colleague Robert Cargill, now at the University of Iowa. We have already been active a number of times, via blog posts and television appearances, to help combat claims involving the Garden of Eden by a reporter/novelist, the treasures of the Copper Scroll by an Oklahoma fire marshal, and the reported discovery of Noah’s ark by the evangelical explorers from Noah’s Ark Ministries International (based in Hong Kong).
As I wrote in the epilogue to this book, I still harbor the hope that future discussions of such biblical mysteries will be based more upon facts and less upon flights of fantasy. One day, hopefully soon, we will be able to solve some or all of the mysteries presented in this book, but if we do, it will be because of hard work by professional archaeologists engaged in scientific research and meticulous excavations, not because of spurious adventures by publicity-seeking amateur enthusiasts.
The results of such hard work, and any suggested hypotheses made as a result, such as the one that I present in chapter 7 regarding the possible whereabouts of the Ten Lost Tribes, should be able to be subjected to rigorous scrutiny and testing by other scholars, but should also be made available to the general public. It is therefore also necessary for professional archaeologists to make their findings known to the public in a rapid and accessible manner, even if this is as simple as a preliminary report posted on the Internet, something I do after every season of excavation at the site of Tel Kabri in Israel, where my co-director Assaf Yasur-Landau of Haifa University and I are uncovering the remains of a Canaanite palace from the 17th century B.C.
I said in the introduction to this book that an exciting but erroneous story trumps good but boring data every time. Obviously, that is still the case, and probably always will be, considering the general state of human nature. However, I hope that this book, and others like it, as well as the new Web sites and biblioblogs that have been established, will help to debunk both old and new pseudo-archaeological claims. But it is a two-way street, for the general public must also be less gullible and become more proactive in demanding proof when pseudo-archaeological claims are made by enthusiastic amateurs and spread by the world’s media.
What I did not have the space to mention in my Boston Globe op-ed is that every year there are also real scientific archaeological expeditions excavating in the lands of the Bible and elsewhere around the world that really can use help and contributions, in terms of money, time, or both. If readers of this book are truly interested in solving biblical mysteries, or even just in helping to uncover new information about the distant past, including actually participating in an archaeological excavation rather than just reading about it, there are a whole host of opportunities to contribute to this work. Just contact the AIA, ASOR, or the Biblical Archaeology Society (BAS), all of whom maintain lists of university-sponsored excavations taking place each year.
Since, as just noted, claims and searches have continued to be made by various people in the five years since this book first appeared, brief discussions of these are presented below, to bring the material presented above up to date.
In 2009, media sources reported that Klaus Schmidt, a German archaeologist, had claimed a link between the site of Göbekli Tepe in Turkey and the Garden of Eden. In the end, it turned out that the stories were the result of a campaign by the journalist Sean Thomas, who was apparently primarily interested in publicity for a forthcoming book, The Genesis Secret: A Novel, which he had written and was publishing under the pseudonym Tom Knox. For that, he was slapped on the knuckles by the German Archaeological Institute (DAI), which declared that it “reserves the right to take legal action against further dissemination of the story in connection with the work of the DAI at Göbekli Tepe.”
In addition, a lighthearted and fairly thorough book about the various searches for the Garden of Eden was published in 2011 as Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden, by Brook Wilensky-Lanford.
Randall Price of Liberty University, cited in this book in chapter 6 regarding his search for the Ark of the Covenant, also began searching for Noah’s ark in 2008. He received much media attention for his subsequent claims in early 2009, which were immediately challenged by scholars. No proof for his claims has ever been presented.
When, in 2010, the Hong Kong explorers made their competing claim to have discovered Noah’s ark, complete with a video, Price posted evidence on the Internet that they had been duped by a Kurdish guide. They also met with considerable skepticism from professional archaeologists and it is quite likely that they were the victims of a hoax. They, however, continue to assert the authenticity of the discovery and have now produced a movie to promote their findings.
The dueling claims continued through the end of 2011, fueled by several press releases concerning pronouncements made by Joel Klenck, a Harvard-educated archaeologist who is president of an entity called the Paleontological Research Corporation and author of books such as Genesis: Ancient Taxonomies and the Demise of the Dinosaurs, as well as several novels about a postapocalyptic Earth. His assertions about his journey to the reported site of Noah’s ark have been challenged by the tour guide who took him up Mount Ararat, and his claims have not been taken seriously by the scholarly establishment.
More recently, a Danish journalist named Henri Nissen has weighed in on the debate, publishing a book in fall 2012 titled Noah’s Ark: Ancient Accounts and New Discoveries, which favorably discusses the claims made by the Hong Kong–based team. The publisher’s description of the book, however, does not provide confidence as to the accuracy of its contents, for it claims that “the book and its content will question the foundation of the theory of Revolution.” One can only suppose that they meant the theory of evolution and hope that the apparent mistake will be corrected as soon as it is called to their attention.
Finally, the most recent story that yet another person has found Noah’s ark appeared in December 2011. This time the claim has been made by Daniel P. McGivern, a Roman Catholic entrepreneur from Hawaii, whose quest first was reported in 2004, but who apparently did not get results for nearly a decade, and is only just now reporting them. His claim has been met with skepticism by scholars.
In 2009, Barbara Sivertsen, managing editor of the Journal of Geology, published a book on the Exodus entitled The Parting of the Sea: How Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Plagues Shaped the Story of Exodus. Sivertsen argues that the Exodus was in fact two separate “exoduses,” both of which were triggered by volcanic explosions—the dramatic eruption of the island of Santorini in 1628 B.C. and that of Yali (also in the Aegean Sea) about 200 years later. In fact, she also argues that a third volcanic eruption, this one in “the northern Arabian volcanic shield” at about the same time as the Santorini eruption, also formed part of the Exodus narrative. Finally, she attempts, as many others have done before her, working from an a priori assumption that the events took place, to provide scientific explanations for the ten plagues and for the parting of the Red Sea, as well as taking on the question of the destruction of Jericho and the Israelite conquest of Canaan.
Many of Sivertsen’s proposed explanations seem a bit of a stretch. As she herself notes, “No one has proposed a composite, two-part Exodus with two separate volcanic eruptions and no one has pointed out the connection between the eruption of Yali and a second exodus.” Probably for good reason, I would say, for there is no archaeological evidence at all for a two-part Exodus; we are hard-pressed enough to find any evidence for a single Exodus. In short, although there are some reasonable parts to the book, such as discussing earthquakes in connection with the supposed destruction of Jericho, this is just another example—like the similarly themed book The Miracles of Exodus: A Scientist’s Discovery of the Extraordinary Natural Causes of the Biblical Stories, published a few years earlier by the British physicist Sir Colin Humphreys (who has recently decided that the Last Supper took place on a Wednesday)—of someone in another discipline dabbling in their spare time with biblical mysteries and deciding that their field can provide the answers.
In February 2008, Tudor Parfitt, a professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the School of African and Oriental Studies at the University of London, and known as the “British Indiana Jones,” published a book titled The Lost Ark of the Covenant: Solving the 2,500-Year-Old Mystery of the Fabled Biblical Ark, in which he claimed to have located the Ark of the Covenant in South Africa. Previously known for his claim that the Lemba tribe in Zimbabwe is one of the lost tribes of Israel, Parfitt is also not an archaeologist. More importantly, the “Ark” looks more like a wooden drum, a fact which Parfitt attempts to explain away. Needless to say, his claim is not taken seriously by scholars.
In addition, some of the material concerning the Ark of the Covenant presented on Web sites devoted to the work of amateur enthusiasts has changed since this book first appeared, with the result that some of the Web links cited above are no longer active or now have modified material. In particular, the Wyatt Archaeological Research page, concerning Ron Wyatt’s reported discovery of the Ark of the Covenant, has been modified several times. Previously, a preface posted on the first Web page devoted to Wyatt’s search for the Ark of the Covenant, written by Richard Rives, president of Wyatt Archaeological Research, stated: “Ron’s account of his discovery of the Ark of the Covenant cannot be confirmed and … recent exploration reveals unexplained discrepancies in that account.… Ron had no second witness and provided no conclusive evidence as to the location of the Ark of the Covenant; therefore, his account … makes perfect sense from a Biblical standpoint but it is not yet a proven fact” (as quoted and footnoted in this book in chapter 6).
However, the above statement was removed and replaced for a time by an “Update” page containing a new statement that read: “The excavations of 2005 and 2006 at the Garden Tomb, in Jerusalem, did not completely confirm the findings as stated by the late Ronald E. Wyatt during his periods of excavation during the years 1979 to 1989. We no longer have the personal account of Ronald Wyatt to help guide us. For these reasons, until further research, the Ark of the Covenant materials presented by Wyatt Archaeological Research prior to 2005 have been removed from circulation. (signed) … Dr. Jerome Niswonger and Eric Lembcke. As per the unanimous decision of the Board of Directors, Wyatt Archaeological Research: Mary Nell, Wyatt Lee, Eric Lembcke, Jerome Niswonger, Richard Rives.” In addition, all of the previously associated Web pages, of which there were nine total dealing with his discovery of the Ark, were removed.
In March 2011, however, the “Update” page was removed in turn and the original pages were uploaded once again, but this time with the disclaimer up front, in bold capital letters: “AT THIS TIME, WYATT ARCHAEOLOGICAL RESEARCH CAN PROVIDE NO CONCLUSIVE EVIDENCE REGARDING THE DISCOVERY OF THE ARK OF THE COVENANT.… Ron Wyatt claimed that he found the Ark of the Covenant. He was never allowed to provide conclusive evidence.” At least the Web site no longer claims definitively that Wyatt found the Ark of the Covenant, which is a small victory.
Similarly, regarding Vendyl Jones, who died in December 2010, the Web site containing his claims regarding the Ark of the Covenant has been taken off-line and is no longer available. It has been replaced by a much-abbreviated Web site that does not list the Ark of the Covenant among his discoveries.
Finally, regarding Bob Cornuke’s claims, disclaimers have now been added to the pages concerned with his reported discoveries of the Ark of the Covenant and Noah’s ark, as well as Mount Sinai. These affect the specific discussions of Cornuke’s claims concerning the first two topics (chapter 6 for the Ark of the Covenant and chapter 2 for Noah’s ark in this book). In fact, three of Cornuke’s four “searches” now have similar disclaimers on their relevant Web pages; the one that does not (St. Paul’s shipwreck) is also the only one that I did not mention in this book. As an example, the disclaimer now posted on Cornuke’s Web page for the Ark of the Covenant reads as follows:
Disclaimer Statement. The research and site survey being investigated by the BASE Institute has strong potential. Is it the path of the Ark of the Covenant? The BASE Institute does not make the claim that we have found the Ark of the Covenant. We’ll let you draw your own conclusions. In our opinion, it’s a candidate. The research continues.
In 2009, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, a professor at New York University, published a scholarly book called The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History. In the first chapters he runs through the same Neo-Assyrian data for the exiles, discussing both the areas in Assyria where they were sent and the idea of Arzareth as simply being “another land,” just as I did in this book, and coming to similar conclusions about where those who were exiled went.
However, rather than also discussing the possibility that the majority remained behind in the former northern kingdom of Israel, he moves on to explore the alternate traditions that they ended up in China, Spain, Ethiopia, and elsewhere, but less as a factual account ticking off the pluses and minuses for each location and more as a philosophical discussion citing the likes of the novelist Umberto Eco, author of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum, and the historian of religion Mircea Eliade, neither of whom are likely to have ever been cited in a book concerned with this topic before.
In so doing, he discusses the lost tribes as a world history and as a “story of profound loss”; he is more concerned with “the history of this story” and how it “moved from despair to hope” (p. 225) than in actually locating the tribes. Overall, this is perhaps the most thoughtful book yet published on the topic, but it does not, in the end, provide a concrete answer to the mystery of where the Ten Lost Tribes ended up, for that is not the aim of his venture into intellectual history, as one reviewer called it.
Whether it was the publication of this book or something else entirely, the fact that Cornuke has made changes to his Web site, and the fact that the Web pages for Ron Wyatt and Vendyl Jones have also been substantially changed, by either providing a disclaimer (Wyatt) or deleting the claims entirely (Jones), may mean that calling out the enthusiastic amateurs and questioning their claims can have an immediate impact. However, we must continue to do more, including perhaps asking trustworthy scholars to post responses online to the most frequently asked questions in biblical archaeology, creating an online list of archaeologists who are willing to work with the media concerning their areas of expertise, and finding additional scholars who are willing to take the time to assess and address the claims that are continually being made by amateur enthusiasts. We owe it to the public and to those who want to build their faith on a firm foundation.
—E. H. C., October 2012