Journal: Bible and Spade (First Run)
Volume: BSP 04:4 (Autumn 1975)
Article: Your Questions Answered
Author: Anonymous

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BSP 4:4 (Autumn 1975) p. 130

Your Questions Answered

Is There Any Definite Proof That Noah’s Ark Has Been Found?

As regular readers of Bible and Spade know, there are many people who believe that the remains of Noah’s Ark still exist on Mt. Ararat in eastern Turkey. Much time, money, and effort has been expended in recent years attempting to locate these remains. But the nagging question is, is Noah’s Ark really there?

BSP 4:4 (Autumn 1975) p. 131

There is a strong tradition that the Ark is indeed on Ararat. Writers as early as Berossus (475 B.C.) attest to this, as do the local inhabitants of the region of Ararat.

In modern times, there have been a number of “sightings” of the vessel. The problem with the sightings is that there is no evidence to back them up. In each case, the documentation has either been lost or destroyed.

Another bothersome aspect of these sightings is that they have occurred at various places on the mountain. Some have explained this by saying that, over the centuries, the Ark has probably broken into sections and these sections have moved to various locations on the mountain through the action of earthquakes, avalanches, glacier motion, etc.

One even becomes more suspicious of the sightings when one reads of expeditions which checked out several recent sightings and found them to be natural formations which looked deceivingly like a ship when viewed from the air or from a distance away on the ground.

Very little in the way of scientific data has come from the various efforts to locate the Ark. When one reviews all of the published reports on the search for the Ark, the only hard evidence which emerges is the wood that was recovered by Fernand Navarra in 1955 and by the Scientific Exploration and Archaeological Research (SEARCH) group in 1969. (See Bible and Spade, Autumn 1974 pages 119–121.) Before commenting on this wood, however, let us turn to the book of Genesis to see what it has to say about the wood used in the building of Noah’s ship.

In Genesis 6:14 we read that God commanded Noah to build the Ark of “gopher” wood. The word “gopher” is merely a transliteration of the Hebrew word for the type of wood Noah was to use for the Ark. Hebrew scholars do not know what type of wood is meant here, but they speculate that it may be a resinous type of wood. God then told Noah to pitch the Ark, within and without, with pitch. And “thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he” (Genesis 6:22).

What about the wood that has been reco...

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