The twentieth century has seen many attacks challenging the historical accuracy of the Bible. However scientific advance may actually provide modern proof of Biblical revelations. Scientists’ examinations of the Holy Shroud and expeditions to Mount Ararat appear to have confirmed two of the great events of the Scriptures: the crucifixion of Christ and the landing of Noah’s Ark.
Some 14,000 feet high up on Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey is a giant wooden ship, portions of which have been seen by about 200 people in the last century. How did it get there? There is no
nearby source of timber. No trees grow on this mountain or within a hundred miles of the ship. It is not logical that any ancient civilization would build an immense rectangular wooden vessel, thought to be 450 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 45 feet high, near the top of a high, barren mountain peak.
Mount Ararat is inaccessible for many reasons. Not only is it an icy and difficult mountain to climb, but it is located in a restricted military zone close to the Turkish-Russian border, just 40 miles from a Soviet missile base.
The Turkish minister of the interior has banned most of the expeditions that have tried to climb Mount Ararat in the last six years to examine the ark. The Russians are very suspicious and will not let any American airplanes or helicopters fly over Mount Ararat, being convinced that they would be part of a CIA espionage plot.
A few expeditions have reached the ark on foot and brought back pieces of wood that scientists tell us date from the time of Noah. Biblical scholars generally agree that the Great Flood occurred about 5,000 years ago.
The French archaeologist Fernand Navarra made several expeditions in Mount Ararat beginning in 1952, when he found a large mass of dark wood embedded in the glacier about 13,000 feet high.
In 1955 and 1968, Navarra brought back timbers found in the ice of Mount Ararat. They were examined by Nobel Prize winner Dr. Melvin A. Cook, who concluded that the wood was of the right
age to have been Noah’s Ark.
Among the five pieces of planking that Navarra brought back in 1969 was a five-foot beam that had been hand—hewn and squared, and had mortise and tenon joints. The beam matched the wood recovered from the ark by James Bryce in 1876.
The Center of Forestry Research and Analysis in Paris confirmed that the wood was white oak and had an age of about 4,506 years. It is a type of white oak that grows only in the Mediterranean
region where Noah is believed to have built the ark. Other wood experts also estimate the age of the wood to be about 5,000 years.
In 1973, Thomas B. Turner of the McDonnell-Douglas Company in St. Louis told of an Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS) photograph that possibly showed Noah’s Ark in the same quadrant on Mount Ararat where previous ground explorers had found the hand-hewn timbers.
The search for Noah’s Arc continues to be a fascination to many people, including Dr. John Montgomery who has climbed Mount Ararat many times. He and Tom Crotser, who has photographed the gunwale planking of the ark’s bow in the ice near the top of Mount Ararat, are convinced that civilization was saved, just as the Bible teaches, by Noah and his Ark at the time of the Great Flood.
