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The Bible says “the mountains of Ararat” (Genesis 8:4).

“Ararat” is commonly equated with the ancient realm of Urartu, which included the present region of Armenia. Mt. Ararat is located in the region of Armenia, but not inside the official boundaries of Armenia today. (It was before World War I.) Many people think that the ark landed on Mt. Ararat or somewhere close by.

But…

1. Mt. Ararat is only a single mountain, not the mountains of Ararat.
2. Mt. Ararat is a volcano which probably formed after the time of Noah. (It might have started during the flood.) Even if the ark did land in that location, it likely would have been buried by the volcano and would not be on or near the top today. Josephus (~ A.D. 70) said that the ark could still be visited in his day, but he did not do so and probably just thought it was still visible.
3. The first mention of Urartu outside of the Bible is during the reign of Shalmaneser I in the middle of the 12^th Century B.C.. Moses wrote Genesis during his lifetime in the 14^th Century B.C.. Moses probably used a word that the readers of his time would understand, but the people could not have understood a word to refer to a people and region that did not yet exist.
4. In Jeremiah 51:27, Ararat is grouped with Minni and Ashkenaz. Ashkenaz seems to refer to what was later called the Scythians, who lived in a wide area north of the Black and Caspian Seas into most of what is today Kazakhstan. Some scholars place Ashkenaz in what is now central Turkey. Minni (also called Minnae, Mannae, and Manna) is a region of what is today northwest Iran reaching from Lake Urmia perhaps as far as Hamedan and Mount Alvand. Minni may have shared a boundary with a portion of the Ashkenazi lands. Urartu was a known territory at the time of Jeremiah and was situated between Minni and Ashkenaz (either directly between or in a corner formed by the two). Because the Hebrew word for Ararat is very similar to Urartu (Urartu in Hebrew would take the same letters.) most have concluded that both words refer to the same region. But since Moses wrote Genesis 8 before Urartu existed, it’s possible that “Ararat” in Genesis does not refer to Urartu, but to some other region. (That the names of two regions are phonetically similar does not mean that they must refer to the same place. Consider Swaziland and Switzerland.) If Moses’ Ararat was located southeast of Minni, Jeremiah could have been referring to three regions in a row, corresponding fairly well at the time to the land controlled by the Medes. Jeremiah was predicting that Babylon would be overrun, and the reference to the Medes in verse 28 could be a poetic repetition of “Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz.” When Babylon was invaded, it was not invaded from the northwest, but from the east and northeast. (If Moses’s “Ararat” was, in fact, southeast of Minni, one should expect some confirmation of the sound of ARRT being applied to something in that region from contemporary language and records. I am not aware of any such confirmation. This suggestion stems from the difficulties posed by equating “Ararat” with Urartu and from the way Jeremiah parallels “Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz” with “Medes”.)
5. The early Christians and the Muslims considered Mt Cudi (Judi) to be the landing site of the ark. Mt Cudi is not east of Sumer (See #7, below), but it shows that the association of the ark with Mt. Ararat of today did not always exist. A local legend in the area of Mount Alvand in Iran says a ruin near the summit is Shem’s tomb.
6. Mt. Ararat was not even called Mt. Ararat until the middle ages.
7. Genesis 11:2 says the people moved “from the east” to Shinar. The majority of current scholarship says that Shinar is most likely the ancient area of Sumer and Eridu is the most likely site of the tower of Babel (not the Babylon of Jeremiah’s day). Armenia/Urartu is not east of Sumer. (The Hebrew could be translated “from the east” or “in the east”, but not “toward the east”. “From” is the dominant translation of the Hebrew particle. The scholars who translated Hebrew into Greek for the Septuagint clearly rendered it “from”.)
8. The Biblical evidence places Shinar in southern Mesopotamia, nowhere near Armenia/Urartu. If the ark had landed in Urartu (near either Mt. Ararat or Mt. Cudi), the people would have traversed the entire Mesopotamian region to get to Shinar/Sumer. It is certainly possible, but highly unlikely that they would have ignored all the good arable land in the upper and middle regions to get to lower Mesopotamia. It’s much more logical to conclude that once the population outgrew the crop-bearing ability of the mountain region near the ark they would settle in the first arable region they found. If “Ararat” was southeast of Minni (See point 4, above.), it could well have reached to the mountains immediately east of Shinar/Sumer.
9. The Sanskrit root of the Hebrew word for Ararat means “sacred land”. Therefore “mountains of Ararat” could be translated as “mountains of the sacred land”. The question would then be: where is the sacred land? (It would not be Palestine. We call that the “holy land”; Moses did not.)

Therefore, we cannot tell with any degree of certainty where the ark landed. But we can make an educated guess that it was probably somewhere east and fairly close to southern Mesopotamia, perhaps in what are now called the Zagros Mountains in Iran.

Part of the problem in trying to locate the resting place of the ark is the fact that things change over time. Just because a certain mountain exists today does not mean it existed in the first two centuries after the flood. If we view the layers of stratified rock around the world to be the result of the great flood, we must also conclude that once the flood drained away things did not remain static. Those layers, which had to have been laid down horizontally, are cracked, bent, broken, and uplifted to form what we see today. This had to have happened mostly after the flood, even if some of it started during the flood. (The flood did not have to cover Mt. Everest. All it had to cover were the mountains that existed at the time.)

Too many “scholars” ignore this reality of change. They assume that the “ark rested” means that it settled on the seabed (although it could also mean it rested at anchor), and that because the peaks of the mountains could not be seen until some time later, it must have grounded on the highest peak in the area so that the other peaks were not visible until the waters receded further. But what if the other peaks were rising? What if a whole range of mountains was rising two or more times higher than the place the ark settled? The ark might have grounded on what was the first and highest part of the mountains of Ararat to be exposed on that day, but that does not mean that that location is the highest point in the mountains of Ararat centuries and millennia later. (As with topography, there was probably also change in climate and vegetation. With polar ice caps – the “ice age” – and changing ocean temperatures, what is desert today likely was not desert then.)

The conditions where the ark landed could well have been relatively stable and habitable for a few centuries while the rest of the earth was still changing so violently that habitation anywhere else was impossible. Once things settled down close to what they are today, people could strike out from Babel to new homelands, some up river toward Nineveh and beyond, some by sea to the Indus River and elsewhere.

Most scholars today agree that Shinar corresponds to ancient Sumer. They could be right, and I have no hard evidence to disprove the idea. Civilization does seem to have spread from the region of Sumer. But there is, I understand, also evidence that the Sumerians were not the only people in existence at the time Sumer was the dominant civilization. The location of Sumer – and specifically Eridu, which seems currently to have the best evidence of the tower of Babel – poses a question if people came from the east to Shinar. If they came from the east, they would have had to cross the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Again, it’s not impossible, but why would they not first establish a city in a location that would not require crossing the rivers? Might the real Shinar (and location of the tower of Babel) be located on the plain of the Karun River somewhere between Ahvaz and Dezful? (Was Chogha Zanbil built on the tower of Babel site?)

I know of no one who has suggested this, but (Permit me an excursus.) one needs to understand the nature of scholarship on the ancient middle east (and in general). It was not started by local scholars using well known established locations and records. It was started by Europeans who became interested in the subject and traveled to the area to conduct their research. To be sure, they studied ancient records as much as they could, but such records were and remain sparse. Much of their conclusions were really little more than educated guesses that they made first and then looked for evidence to back up their conclusions. This is often the only approach possible with scientific study, but it has consequences. Once one educated scholar comes up with a conclusion, he is joined by others (He’s so smart he must be right), and together their conclusions soon make up the majority opinion of “scholarship” (We’re so smart we must be right.). That’s not to say those conclusions are always wrong, but that once an opinion becomes accepted by the majority, it becomes the norm and it is very hard for anyone to propose a different theory without being ridiculed as “unscholarly” and without damage to one’s pocketbook, for getting funding for alternative ideas is not easy, and admitting you were wrong could mean no more royalties from the books you’ve written. There is also the matter of prestige, for once a “scholar” has argued in favor of his conclusions he is not likely to say he was mistaken. It’s only when a new majority arises that old ideas are cast aside. This by itself, in turn, does not prove that the old idea was incorrect, but just that it’s no longer the majority opinion. When minority opinions arise, most often the first line of opposition is not the evidence that is set forth, but the fact that they are minority opinions and therefore unworthy of consideration.

At times an alternative opinion is rejected not for prestige and money, but for religious reasons. The Roman Catholic Church has a long record of elevating accepted opinions to the level of doctrine such that anyone who does not agree with the accepted position is threatened with excommunication. The Muslims believe Mecca is Mohammed’s sacred city and anyone who argues it probably isn’t could well meet a violent response. The Jews believe the wailing wall in Jerusalem is a remnant of the ancient temple and will not even consider that it might, in fact, be a portion of the Roman fortress instead. No one is immune from this bias, myself included. The one who believes there is no God or that God played no part in creation will exclude any explanation that includes God, and will reject any scientific evidence and logical deduction that points toward the existence and participation of God. The majority of scientists today are in this camp and represent today’s accepted norm. Their religion determines even what they will accept as “science” and “reason”.

A growing number of scientists, however, acknowledge the existence and participation of God, and some even go so far as to claim that science proves the existence and participation of God. But science doesn’t really prove anything. All it does is present an explanation that best fits the available evidence until another explanation comes along that fits it better. This much, however, can be said: real science fits better with belief in God than with non-belief.

Science is the accumulation of knowledge about the physical (or natural) world by combining one’s sensible (gained through one’s senses) discoveries with the disciplines of mathematics, logic, and previously gained and recorded scientific knowledge. Science expands scientific knowledge by formulating theories from existing knowledge and testing to see if those theories fit further scientific investigation and experimentation. Science can examine and test only what is perceivable by the natural senses (with or without the aid of technical devices). It cannot make assertions about the undetectable or supernatural. What the majority of scientists today ignore is that science cannot make assertions either way about the undetectable or supernatural. Science cannot prove either that, “God created the heavens and the earth,” or that, “No God created the heavens and the earth.” Both are purely religions statements. When a “scientist” excludes the possibility of an explanation that includes divine participation, he is imposing his religious beliefs, his “world view”, onto his “science”. And when a “scientist”, in order to keep God out of the picture, insists we accept as “scientific” explanations that defy the laws of mathematics and logic (for example, are statistical impossibilities) he is just plain lying.

Science can say, “I can’t see God.” Science cannot say, “There is no God,” any more than it can prove God exists. But science can say that the naturally perceived evidence fits better with the belief in a super-intelligent divine creator than it does with a Godless world view. Science can demonstrate that certain Godless explanations are statistically and/or logically impossible. That would not mean that a divine explanation is the only possible alternative, for there might be another Godless explanation that has not yet been proposed, but it would mean that today a divine explanation fits better with the available knowledge. Because I firmly believe God exists and that the Bible record is truth, I am convinced that no Godless explanation will ever be found that does not resort to absurdities.

I am not anti-science. Real scientific investigation has been a boon to mankind. It is not an enemy of Bible doctrine. Nor do I think that one should accept a “scriptural” explanation that flies in the face of science (for example, taking the Bible phrase “four corners of the earth” to mean that the earth must be a flat square). That does not put science above the Bible. But one must apply correct methods of understanding correctly what the Bible actually says and means. Truth cannot contradict truth, and so Bible truth cannot contradict scientific truth, but one must be sure that one’s conclusions on both sides are truly scriptural and truly scientific. I am convinced that the correct understanding of the Bible will never contradict real science, even if it takes some mental wrestling for our limited humans minds to reconcile the two.

Being both pro-Bible and pro-science, I believe that truths gained from each can enrich our knowledge of the other. For example, since I believe from the Bible that Noah’s flood was global, I should expect to find scientific evidence that fits with that belief. When I find that evidence in the strata and fossils around the globe, it enriches my understanding of the greatness of God and his power. The Bible informs my science and science deepens my appreciation and awe of God. (Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:20)

What I find interesting is that Godless scientists say so much about including all the available evidence but will not consider the Bible as part of the evidence. They accept ancient inscriptions, even ancient religious inscriptions, but not the Bible, unless they can quote the Bible in an attempt to show how it does not fit with their “evidence” and must therefore be false. Or they will take even ancient writings about matters of faith only so far as to show what people believed but will not consider them as evidence for anything more. For example, the multiple accounts of a global flood from cultures around the world is accepted as evidence of what those people believed, but is not accepted as evidence that there was some real event upon which all those legends were built, lest any credence to what the Bible says about the flood might be true, even if in part.(So far my excursus.)

For me, the only thing that is beyond the reach of challenge is the clear message of the Scriptures. I emphasize: the clear message of Scripture. For example, it is quite clear that the Bible says the flood of Noah was a global event, not some major local basis for legend. Therefore, no matter how unreasonable that may seem to the majority of “scientific” minds, I reject as false any argument that says it was less than global. But the Bible does not clearly say that the ark landed on or near what is called Mount Ararat today. Therefore, multiple opinions are worthy of consideration and I’ll go along with whichever seems most reasonable to me in light of whatever evidence is available to me. If someone wishes to think that the mountains of Ararat were the mountains of Urartu and can present a logical argument how that conclusion fits with everything the Bible says, that’s fine. But I will also equally accept an argument for a different conclusion as long as it logically fits with everything the Bible says. Moreover, I will not elevate any such argument to the level of doctrine, for the Bible does not clearly say that only one conclusion in this matter is correct.

If one could find irrefutable evidence of the ark itself, that would clinch it; but I doubt such evidence exists. If the ark was visited at the time Herodotus, I doubt that over four millennia of exposure to souvenir and talisman hunters would have left any trace.

The Bible says “the mountains of Ararat” (Genesis 8:4).

“Ararat” is commonly equated with the ancient realm of Urartu, which included the present region of Armenia. Mt. Ararat is located in the region of Armenia, but not inside the official boundaries of Armenia today. (It was before World War I.) Many people think that the ark landed on Mt. Ararat or somewhere close by.

But…

1. Mt. Ararat is only a single mountain, not the mountains of Ararat.
2. Mt. Ararat is a volcano which probably formed after the time of Noah. (It might have started during the flood.) Even if the ark did land in that location, it likely would have been buried by the volcano and would not be on or near the top today. Josephus (~ A.D. 70) said that the ark could still be visited in his day, but he did not do so and probably just thought it was still visible.
3. The first mention of Urartu outside of the Bible is during the reign of Shalmaneser I in the middle of the 12^th Century B.C.. Moses wrote Genesis during his lifetime in the 14^th Century B.C.. Moses probably used a word that the readers of his time would understand, but the people could not have understood a word to refer to a people and region that did not yet exist.
4. In Jeremiah 51:27, Ararat is grouped with Minni and Ashkenaz. Ashkenaz seems to refer to what was later called the Scythians, who lived in a wide area north of the Black and Caspian Seas into most of what is today Kazakhstan. Some scholars place Ashkenaz in what is now central Turkey. Minni (also called Minnae, Mannae, and Manna) is a region of what is today northwest Iran reaching from Lake Urmia perhaps as far as Hamedan and Mount Alvand. Minni may have shared a boundary with a portion of the Ashkenazi lands. Urartu was a known territory at the time of Jeremiah and was situated between Minni and Ashkenaz (either directly between or in a corner formed by the two). Because the Hebrew word for Ararat is very similar to Urartu (Urartu in Hebrew would take the same letters.) most have concluded that both words refer to the same region. But since Moses wrote Genesis 8 before Urartu existed, it’s possible that “Ararat” in Genesis does not refer to Urartu, but to some other region. (That the names of two regions are phonetically similar does not mean that they must refer to the same place. Consider Swaziland and Switzerland.) If Moses’ Ararat was located southeast of Minni, Jeremiah could have been referring to three regions in a row, corresponding fairly well at the time to the land controlled by the Medes. Jeremiah was predicting that Babylon would be overrun, and the reference to the Medes in verse 28 could be a poetic repetition of “Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz.” When Babylon was invaded, it was not invaded from the northwest, but from the east and northeast. (If Moses’s “Ararat” was, in fact, southeast of Minni, one should expect some confirmation of the sound of ARRT being applied to something in that region from contemporary language and records. I am not aware of any such confirmation. This suggestion stems from the difficulties posed by equating “Ararat” with Urartu and from the way Jeremiah parallels “Ararat, Minni, and Ashkenaz” with “Medes”.)
5. The early Christians and the Muslims considered Mt Cudi (Judi) to be the landing site of the ark. Mt Cudi is not east of Sumer (See #7, below), but it shows that the association of the ark with Mt. Ararat of today did not always exist. A local legend in the area of Mount Alvand in Iran says a ruin near the summit is Shem’s tomb.
6. Mt. Ararat was not even called Mt. Ararat until the middle ages.
7. Genesis 11:2 says the people moved “from the east” to Shinar. The majority of current scholarship says that Shinar is most likely the ancient area of Sumer and Eridu is the most likely site of the tower of Babel (not the Babylon of Jeremiah’s day). Armenia/Urartu is not east of Sumer. (The Hebrew could be translated “from the east” or “in the east”, but not “toward the east”. “From” is the dominant translation of the Hebrew particle. The scholars who translated Hebrew into Greek for the Septuagint clearly rendered it “from”.)
8. The Biblical evidence places Shinar in southern Mesopotamia, nowhere near Armenia/Urartu. If the ark had landed in Urartu (near either Mt. Ararat or Mt. Cudi), the people would have traversed the entire Mesopotamian region to get to Shinar/Sumer. It is certainly possible, but highly unlikely that they would have ignored all the good arable land in the upper and middle regions to get to lower Mesopotamia. It’s much more logical to conclude that once the population outgrew the crop-bearing ability of the mountain region near the ark they would settle in the first arable region they found. If “Ararat” was southeast of Minni (See point 4, above.), it could well have reached to the mountains immediately east of Shinar/Sumer.
9. The Sanskrit root of the Hebrew word for Ararat means “sacred land”. Therefore “mountains of Ararat” could be translated as “mountains of the sacred land”. The question would then be: where is the sacred land? (It would not be Palestine. We call that the “holy land”; Moses did not.)

Therefore, we cannot tell with any degree of certainty where the ark landed. But we can make an educated guess that it was probably somewhere east and fairly close to southern Mesopotamia, perhaps in what are now called the Zagros Mountains in Iran.

Part of the problem in trying to locate the resting place of the ark is the fact that things change over time. Just because a certain mountain exists today does not mean it existed in the first two centuries after the flood. If we view the layers of stratified rock around the world to be the result of the great flood, we must also conclude that once the flood drained away things did not remain static. Those layers, which had to have been laid down horizontally, are cracked, bent, broken, and uplifted to form what we see today. This had to have happened mostly after the flood, even if some of it started during the flood. (The flood did not have to cover Mt. Everest. All it had to cover were the mountains that existed at the time.)

Too many “scholars” ignore this reality of change. They assume that the “ark rested” means that it settled on the seabed (although it could also mean it rested at anchor), and that because the peaks of the mountains could not be seen until some time later, it must have grounded on the highest peak in the area so that the other peaks were not visible until the waters receded further. But what if the other peaks were rising? What if a whole range of mountains was rising two or more times higher than the place the ark settled? The ark might have grounded on what was the first and highest part of the mountains of Ararat to be exposed on that day, but that does not mean that that location is the highest point in the mountains of Ararat centuries and millennia later. (As with topography, there was probably also change in climate and vegetation. With polar ice caps – the “ice age” – and changing ocean temperatures, what is desert today likely was not desert then.)

The conditions where the ark landed could well have been relatively stable and habitable for a few centuries while the rest of the earth was still changing so violently that habitation anywhere else was impossible. Once things settled down close to what they are today, people could strike out from Babel to new homelands, some up river toward Nineveh and beyond, some by sea to the Indus River and elsewhere.

Most scholars today agree that Shinar corresponds to ancient Sumer. They could be right, and I have no hard evidence to disprove the idea. Civilization does seem to have spread from the region of Sumer. But there is, I understand, also evidence that the Sumerians were not the only people in existence at the time Sumer was the dominant civilization. The location of Sumer – and specifically Eridu, which seems currently to have the best evidence of the tower of Babel – poses a question if people came from the east to Shinar. If they came from the east, they would have had to cross the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. Again, it’s not impossible, but why would they not first establish a city in a location that would not require crossing the rivers? Might the real Shinar (and location of the tower of Babel) be located on the plain of the Karun River somewhere between Ahvaz and Dezful? (Was Chogha Zanbil built on the tower of Babel site?)

I know of no one who has suggested this, but (Permit me an excursus.) one needs to understand the nature of scholarship on the ancient middle east (and in general). It was not started by local scholars using well known established locations and records. It was started by Europeans who became interested in the subject and traveled to the area to conduct their research. To be sure, they studied ancient records as much as they could, but such records were and remain sparse. Much of their conclusions were really little more than educated guesses that they made first and then looked for evidence to back up their conclusions. This is often the only approach possible with scientific study, but it has consequences. Once one educated scholar comes up with a conclusion, he is joined by others (He’s so smart he must be right), and together their conclusions soon make up the majority opinion of “scholarship” (We’re so smart we must be right.). That’s not to say those conclusions are always wrong, but that once an opinion becomes accepted by the majority, it becomes the norm and it is very hard for anyone to propose a different theory without being ridiculed as “unscholarly” and without damage to one’s pocketbook, for getting funding for alternative ideas is not easy, and admitting you were wrong could mean no more royalties from the books you’ve written. There is also the matter of prestige, for once a “scholar” has argued in favor of his conclusions he is not likely to say he was mistaken. It’s only when a new majority arises that old ideas are cast aside. This by itself, in turn, does not prove that the old idea was incorrect, but just that it’s no longer the majority opinion. When minority opinions arise, most often the first line of opposition is not the evidence that is set forth, but the fact that they are minority opinions and therefore unworthy of consideration.

At times an alternative opinion is rejected not for prestige and money, but for religious reasons. The Roman Catholic Church has a long record of elevating accepted opinions to the level of doctrine such that anyone who does not agree with the accepted position is threatened with excommunication. The Muslims believe Mecca is Mohammed’s sacred city and anyone who argues it probably isn’t could well meet a violent response. The Jews believe the wailing wall in Jerusalem is a remnant of the ancient temple and will not even consider that it might, in fact, be a portion of the Roman fortress instead. No one is immune from this bias, myself included. The one who believes there is no God or that God played no part in creation will exclude any explanation that includes God, and will reject any scientific evidence and logical deduction that points toward the existence and participation of God. The majority of scientists today are in this camp and represent today’s accepted norm. Their religion determines even what they will accept as “science” and “reason”.

A growing number of scientists, however, acknowledge the existence and participation of God, and some even go so far as to claim that science proves the existence and participation of God. But science doesn’t really prove anything. All it does is present an explanation that best fits the available evidence until another explanation comes along that fits it better. This much, however, can be said: real science fits better with belief in God than with non-belief.

Science is the accumulation of knowledge about the physical (or natural) world by combining one’s sensible (gained through one’s senses) discoveries with the disciplines of mathematics, logic, and previously gained and recorded scientific knowledge. Science expands scientific knowledge by formulating theories from existing knowledge and testing to see if those theories fit further scientific investigation and experimentation. Science can examine and test only what is perceivable by the natural senses (with or without the aid of technical devices). It cannot make assertions about the undetectable or supernatural. What the majority of scientists today ignore is that science cannot make assertions either way about the undetectable or supernatural. Science cannot prove either that, “God created the heavens and the earth,” or that, “No God created the heavens and the earth.” Both are purely religions statements. When a “scientist” excludes the possibility of an explanation that includes divine participation, he is imposing his religious beliefs, his “world view”, onto his “science”. And when a “scientist”, in order to keep God out of the picture, insists we accept as “scientific” explanations that defy the laws of mathematics and logic (for example, are statistical impossibilities) he is just plain lying.

Science can say, “I can’t see God.” Science cannot say, “There is no God,” any more than it can prove God exists. But science can say that the naturally perceived evidence fits better with the belief in a super-intelligent divine creator than it does with a Godless world view. Science can demonstrate that certain Godless explanations are statistically and/or logically impossible. That would not mean that a divine explanation is the only possible alternative, for there might be another Godless explanation that has not yet been proposed, but it would mean that today a divine explanation fits better with the available knowledge. Because I firmly believe God exists and that the Bible record is truth, I am convinced that no Godless explanation will ever be found that does not resort to absurdities.

I am not anti-science. Real scientific investigation has been a boon to mankind. It is not an enemy of Bible doctrine. Nor do I think that one should accept a “scriptural” explanation that flies in the face of science (for example, taking the Bible phrase “four corners of the earth” to mean that the earth must be a flat square). That does not put science above the Bible. But one must apply correct methods of understanding correctly what the Bible actually says and means. Truth cannot contradict truth, and so Bible truth cannot contradict scientific truth, but one must be sure that one’s conclusions on both sides are truly scriptural and truly scientific. I am convinced that the correct understanding of the Bible will never contradict real science, even if it takes some mental wrestling for our limited humans minds to reconcile the two.

Being both pro-Bible and pro-science, I believe that truths gained from each can enrich our knowledge of the other. For example, since I believe from the Bible that Noah’s flood was global, I should expect to find scientific evidence that fits with that belief. When I find that evidence in the strata and fossils around the globe, it enriches my understanding of the greatness of God and his power. The Bible informs my science and science deepens my appreciation and awe of God. (Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:20)

What I find interesting is that Godless scientists say so much about including all the available evidence but will not consider the Bible as part of the evidence. They accept ancient inscriptions, even ancient religious inscriptions, but not the Bible, unless they can quote the Bible in an attempt to show how it does not fit with their “evidence” and must therefore be false. Or they will take even ancient writings about matters of faith only so far as to show what people believed but will not consider them as evidence for anything more. For example, the multiple accounts of a global flood from cultures around the world is accepted as evidence of what those people believed, but is not accepted as evidence that there was some real event upon which all those legends were built, lest any credence to what the Bible says about the flood might be true, even if in part.(So far my excursus.)

For me, the only thing that is beyond the reach of challenge is the clear message of the Scriptures. I emphasize: the clear message of Scripture. For example, it is quite clear that the Bible says the flood of Noah was a global event, not some major local basis for legend. Therefore, no matter how unreasonable that may seem to the majority of “scientific” minds, I reject as false any argument that says it was less than global. But the Bible does not clearly say that the ark landed on or near what is called Mount Ararat today. Therefore, multiple opinions are worthy of consideration and I’ll go along with whichever seems most reasonable to me in light of whatever evidence is available to me. If someone wishes to think that the mountains of Ararat were the mountains of Urartu and can present a logical argument how that conclusion fits with everything the Bible says, that’s fine. But I will also equally accept an argument for a different conclusion as long as it logically fits with everything the Bible says. Moreover, I will not elevate any such argument to the level of doctrine, for the Bible does not clearly say that only one conclusion in this matter is correct.

If one could find irrefutable evidence of the ark itself, that would clinch it; but I doubt such evidence exists. If the ark was visited at the time Herodotus, I doubt that over four millennia of exposure to souvenir and talisman hunters would have left any trace.