Posted on 07/07/2006 10:05:17 PM PDT by freedom44
High in the mountains of northwestern Iran, a Christian archaeology expedition has discovered a rock formation that its members say resembles the fabled Noah's ark.
The team discovered the prominent boat-shaped rocks at just over 13,000 feet (4,000 meters) on Mount Suleiman in Iran's Elburz mountain range.
"It looks uncannily like wood," said Robert Cornuke, president of the Bible Archaeology Search and Exploration Institute (BASE), the Palmer Lake, Colorado-based group that launched the expedition.
Photos taken by BASE members show a prow-shaped rock outcrop, which the team says resembles petrified wood, emerging from a ridge.
"We have had [cut] thin sections of the rock made, and we can see [wood] cell structures," Cornuke said.
Cornuke acknowledges that it may be hard to prove that this object was Noah's ark. But he says he is fairly convinced that the rock formation was an important place of pilgrimage in the past.
The BASE team has uncovered evidence of an ancient shrine near the outcrop, suggesting that this was an important place to people in the past, Cornuke says.
"We can't claim to have conclusively found the ark, but it does look like the object that the ancients talked about," Cornuke said.
Noah and the Flood
The story of Noah's ark is told in three major world religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
The Book of Genesis describes a great flood created by God "to destroy all life under the heavens."
But before the flood, God told Noah, one of his human followers, to build an ark and fill it with two of every species on the Earth.
But this location doesn't fit the description given in Genesis of the ark's passengers journeying from the east to arrive at Mesopotamia.
Cornuke and his team think that Mount Ararat might be a red herring.
"The Bible gives us a compass direction here, and it is not in the direction of Turkey. Instead it points directly towards Iran," Cornuke said.
Pilgrim Shrine?
Using the Book of Genesis and other literary sources, the BASE team journeyed to Iran in July 2005 to climb Mount Suleiman.
They chose Mount Suleiman after reading the notes of 19th-century British explorer A. H. McMahan.
In 1894, after climbing Mount Suleiman, McMahan wrote in his journal, "According to some, Noah's ark alighted here after the deluge."
McMahan also spoke of wood fragments from a shrine at the top of the mountain where unknown people had made pilgrimages to the site.
"We found a shrine and wood fragments at 15,000 feet [4,570 meters] elevation, as described by McMahan," Cornuke said.
Subsequent carbon dating of samples from the shrine showed the wood fragments from the site to be around 500 years old.
Lower on the mountain, expedition members came across the ark-like rock formation, which they estimate to be about 400 feet (122 meters) long.
Rocks From the Sea?
Not everyone is convinced by the BASE team's claims.
Kevin Pickering, a geologist at University College London who specializes in sedimentary rocks, doesn't think that the ark-like rocks are petrified wood.
"The photos appear to show iron-stained sedimentary rocks, probably thin beds of silicified sandstones and shales, which were most likely laid down in a marine environment a long time ago," he said.
Pickering thinks that the BASE team may have mistaken the thin layers in the sediment for wood grain and the more prominent layers as beams of wood.
"The wider layers in the rock are what we call bedding planes," he said.
"They show fracture patterns that we associate with … the Earth processes that caused the rocks to be uplifted to their present height."
The boat-shaped structure can also be explained geologically, says retired British geologist Ian West, who has studied Middle Eastern sediments.
"Iran is famous for its small folds, many of which are the oil traps. Their oval, ark-like shape is classical," he said.
Meanwhile, ancient timber specialist Martin Bridge, of England's Oxford Dendrochronology Laboratory, is doubtful that a wooden structure would have lasted long enough to petrify under ordinary conditions.
"Wood will only survive for thousands of years if it is buried in very wet conditions or remains in an extremely arid environment," he said.
Bible scholars think that Noah built his ark somewhere between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, making preservation highly unlikely except in extreme environmental conditions.
And even if the wood had petrified, there seems to be little evidence of Noah's carpentry, according to Robert Spicer, a geologist at England's Open University who specializes in the study of petrification.
"What needs to be documented in this case are preserved, human-made joints, such as scarf, mortice and tenon, or even just pegged boards. I see none of this in the pictures. It's all very unconvincing," Spicer said.
Bridge, the Oxford timber specialist, points out that it would also be impossible for a boat to run aground at 13,000 feet.
"If you put all the water in the world together, melting both the ice caps and all the glaciers, you still wouldn't reach anywhere near the top of the mountain," he said.
Jesus didn't have the benefit of field geologists. We do.
Jesus is God... He is omnipotent... right?
Well ask most women what they think of men and they will answer either dogs or pigs.
Maybe Darwin had the theory right, but the species wrong?
There are those who believe this. There are those who don't. I personally don't.
Point being, whether they ever find Noah's ark or not, my faith still stands firm.
Frankly, I doubt finding it is going to change the mind of someone who has decided not to believe.
Yes, Jesus is God. But as Phil 2:7 says, as Jesus, God emptied Himself and took the form of a servant. So as Jesus, I wouldn't say He was 'omnipotent'. (However, since God is omnipresent, it's not like there wasn't someone running the universe while Jesus walked the earth.)
This comparison shows that you not only have chosen not to believe, but are venomous toward those who have chosen otherwise. Why so full of bitterness?
I see. I'm sorry to hear that.
I think we're trying to have a discussion about science, not mythology.
Philippians 2:7, NIV says nothing about "emptying Himself." I do recall that that phrase occurs in the Charles Wesley hymn "And Can it Be," second verse, "He left His Father's throne above / so free so infinite His grace / Emptied Himself of all but love /and bled for Adam's helpless race."
However, the biblical text simply says that Christ "made himself nothing."
IIRC, an explanatory text of the (I think) Westminster Shorter Catechism put it well (I think I quote it correctly): "Remaining what He was [i.e. divine], he became what he was not [i.e. humman]."
So I must respectfully disagree that Jesus lost omnipotence. After all, he did perform miracles and he did rise from the dead.
"I bought a grilled cheese sandwich with a picture of The Virgin Mary on it on ebay.
Ah'm a goin to heven, fur sure."
____________________________________
No you're not.
"Yet I fear the day will come when some Ann Coulter is going to condemn us as a bunch of godless atheists for not believing this story."
____________________
Ann Coulter isn't the one you need to be worried about.
What did Jesus say about those who make and love a lie? And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. When he referred to the days of noe, HE meant the hurricane that wiped out that delta region of the Indus River thousands of years earlier and carried on as an old family story by oral tradition; then jazzed up much like hitler's aryan superiority. Bangladesh - 1970, camille - 1969, give or take a few years; the same hurricane death toll continues even today. Witness the indian ocean tsunami of 18 months ago. What if there was no TV, no electronic media, not even a local newspaper report? How would you know years later, as illiterate people, that it had even happened?........Try this experiment : a room of 10 people sitting in a circle. Each person whispers a short story to the person to the right. After 9 other people repeat the story in going around the circle, what are the odds you'll hear your exact story whispered in your left ear? NIL of course. Thus you see how 7 generations of telling the noah story gets glorified into a MYTH. A true "sand grit" story wrapped in a pearl of lies.....Hitler knew well the power of myth. A small lie is easily found out, a GREAT LIE of telling the german people you're the BEST, SMARTEST, GREATEST is like telling a homely girl she's beautiful. She knows it's a lie but LOVES it just the same.....Grow up kid, graduate out of being a 5 year old in sunday school, easily suckered by any story that SOUNDS wonderful. Satan doesn't come at you as your fierce enemy, he comes as your bosom buddy, your best pal, telling you any myth you want to hear. For thousands of years jews, arabs, christians have bought the noah MYTH, time to grow up...what happens to those who make and love a lie?
You are right--the Bible was written by men--various men, at various times and various places, and what they wrote was inspired by God. II Tim 3:16,17.
Does this mean I get to keep my computer lol?
Why do you think so many of the others here have trouble with the idea of an actual historical Noahic flood?
96 and still hanging in there! Move over methusala, you've got competition. Heard an abductee on the Art Bell show say that the alien told him they live about 10,000 years, then can either spirit-transfer to a new body(like trading in your old junker car for a newer model)or join the spirit world entirely.....Ok, the REAL story of noah, a hurricane survivor, is hidden right there in the account. A cubit is somewhere between 15" to 18", thus water 15 cubits deep is between 18.75 ft to 22.5 ft deep, PERFECT for a hurricane storm surge. How did he know the water was that deep? His orchard trees were 15 cubits high, the flood waters just covered their tops....Out in the middle of the ocean(gulf of arabia)the curvature of the earth makes it SEEM like the whole world is covered with water, esp from a low LOG RAFT. When the LOG RAFT washes up back on the pakistani beach(from the CounterClockWise gyre because it's in the northern hemisphere)it first hits an outer sand bar at high tide. Thus they have to wait until the water assuages, ie, low tide, to wade back to the true shore. Noah and family go back to his farm/orchard but virtually all the neighbors were swept away in the hurricane....Also remember that this is 7000 years ago and weather patterns were different. Now they hit Bangladesh/east coast of india but then a major cat 4 or 5 could have hit the Indus River delta area much like katrina did to New Orleans last august.....That then is the true story of a hurricne survivor that passed from generation to generation of pakistani goat/sheep herders, getting embellished with each telling. 4 days of hurricane rain become 40 days, a pakistani beach doesn't sound too impressive, so Mt Ararat(if they had known about Mt Everest, noah's raft, now SHIP as big as the Queen Mary, would have landed on top of IT)....On and on it went, bragadoccio/fish story/MYTH, a pearl of lies built around the "sand grit" of a true, but believable, story. Finally a young pakistani boy named ABRAM swallowed the whole MYTH, hook, line and sinker.....MYTHS : vampires = final stages of rabies. greek gods = merely "super" greeks. Unicorn = african rhinocerous. On and on they go....What MYTHS do you believe in? Have you ever had the courage to critically examine the myths you've always taken for granted?
How many arcs were there? This is about the fifth one I've heard about in my lifetime.
Marilyn Von Savant was right : you can convince a 5 year old of ANYTHING, a 95 year old of NOTHING. If the land mass of buoyant continental rock floating on denser mafic rock, the aesthenosphere/plates, was reduced to 1 inch high or so; yes, water would cover the land by more than a kilometer as the abyssal plain is 3 km down. Basically the noah myth was drummed into your head when you were 5 years old in sunday school, just as it was in young ABRAM'S head. It's a "feel good"/"our people are the greatest" myth about a hurricane survivor, nothing more. Do you want to die still believing a lie? Or finally know the truth before it's too late?
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