The Sean McDowell Show - An UPDATE On Noah's Ark: The Latest Discoveries (ft. Titus Kennedy)

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

What do the latest excavations reveal about the search for Noah's ark? Is it possibly in Iran or the mountains of Ararat? Dr. Titus Kennedy has excavated at a few archaeological sites in the Ararat region, in addition to on the ground research, and he gives us an update on the various claims and discoveries. READ: The Essential Archaeological Guide to Bible Lands (https://amzn.to/3TSJYZG) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: @sean_mcdowell Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org

Have we discovered Noah's Ark? What about the latest digs in Turkey and Iran? Noah's Ark seems to be the most popular artifact, if we can call it that, today. What do they reveal about the history of the Bible and this famous story? Our guest today is back because of Popular Command, a PhD and a practicing archaeologist, Titus Kennedy, author of a ton of books that we've talked about before on this channel. He has also dug at some of these very sites and seen some of the data firsthand is going to help us weigh into this fun and timely topic. So Titus, good to have you back. Hey, thanks, Sean. Great to be here. So as a lay person like myself, there's something about the search for Noah's Ark that's just intriguing and fascinating. I always want to know what's going on. But in archaeological terms, just in terms of how the archaeological world looks at this, how high would you rate the search for the Ark? Like how important is it? And how

much time and energy is invested in finding it? I would say that Noah's Ark seems to be the most popular artifact, if we can call it that today, that is searched for in this modern era, even beyond the Ark of the Covenant or anything else. So it certainly has a lot of significance to people. There have been many, many expeditions, even yearly, sometimes multiple per year, searching various locations for Noah's Ark. And this has happened over the last few decades or several decades. Before that, we have record of some searches but not as often so it's become more and more popular and there are people who are putting a huge amount of time energy and

resources into this I do think it would be an incredibly huge discovery if somebody actually found it but I don't know if it is the place where we should focus all our resources just because of how difficult it would be to locate. Is it still in existence? Things like this. Okay, that's a really important point. We're going to get into what we maybe should expect to even find. But tell us if you've personally dug at Mount Ararat and any of these kind of alternative sites that we're going to get into, and how are they similar and different from other archaeological digs? Sure. I haven't done excavations on the mountain or any of these mountains, but I've

excavated in the Ararat or the Urartu region at three different archaeological sites, Shen, Gavi, Erebuni, Karmir, Blur. So these are all located in present Armenia. No one has done a true excavation on Mount Ararat or any of the Candidate Mountains because archaeologists don't really dig into rock. There are excavations sometimes up at high elevation, but they're excavating through the soil and not at 16,000 feet. However, people have explored different areas where they think the ark might have been located. And some people have even taken rock samples and soil samples. There was even one group fairly recently that did some ice core drilling down pretty deep, high up on Mount Ararat, trying to find a possible location for the arc.

Okay, so it sounds like some of the barriers are ice and rock and elevation. So even if somebody wanted to, are there any other barriers? Are there like legal barriers that make it difficult going into Turkey versus other places? What are some of the other barriers, funding barriers that would just make such a thing hard in the first place? Yes, there are legal barriers as far as permits. There's also safety concerns, both just in climbing a mountain that is huge and high elevation, but also because of unrest in the area and danger. So you've got those problems. It's very expensive to mount expeditions like that, especially if it's not just a few people who are hiking up to the summit. You've got to bring equipment with you. And so you've got to have a lot of people and some specialized heavy equipment. So there are many factors making it quite difficult. Although, as I said, there have still been a lot of expeditions that have gone looking for the Ark. Okay. So how how many like if we went to mount

errat right now in that area how many would we find whether these are professionals or just non-professionals that are interested in maybe trying to find the ark like would we come across people all over the place would we probably find no one like what would we expect to find if we went there like tomorrow well if you went there tomorrow you would definitely find no one like what would we expect to find if we went there like tomorrow well if you went there tomorrow you would definitely find no one because it's the end the end of spring or the beginning of spring excuse me and so you're gonna you're gonna go up in the late summer basically is is the time but i don't know if anyone is doing an expedition this year uh things things got more difficult recently so 10 years ago you may have come across a couple of expeditions now this year

probably not okay that that's helpful now are you planning to go back? Is this something on your list? When you look at the top 25 places you want to dig at, where would you place this in terms of interest for you and priority? Well, again, I wouldn't be digging on the top of the mountain, but definitely interested in going up to the summit, looking around, surveying, and just seeing what's there, what you can see and so forth. I know some people have mentioned that they think there is a lot more ice melt in the 20th century and it might have revealed some things for a time. But now there is more ice buildup. So maybe it's more difficult. I think that's a reason why this one crew went and did ice core drilling where they thought the ark might have been located. So I have an interest in it, but there are a lot of excavations of biblical cities that I would put above this in my list.

And that's where my focus would be. Now, I think I might be jumping ahead here, but you have dug in the areas around kind of modern day Armenia. Were you digging for stuff even related to the Ark or just completely other finds in that place? Other finds. The relation is that it's ancient Urartu ancient air rat so it's it's the name uh one of the cities extremely old so i see that as something that might connect more to the table of nations but not to noah specifically okay okay so that makes sense so this is tied to the story of the ark even though you're not looking for it. You're looking for kind of incidental details surrounding the Ark to see if they match up. Is that correct? Yeah. In terms of the name, in terms of future

history of Ararat mentioned in the Bible and other sources, yes. Okay. Fair enough. That's helpful. So how reasonable is it, do you think, for somebody to find Noah's Ark remains? Maybe there's just a simple answer, and this is a stupid question, but what exactly are people really looking for? or at least some remains of ancient wood or petrified wood or some kind of outline of the structure. In terms of the plausibility of finding it now, I would say that's very, very low. Why is it? Well, first of all, if we're talking about Mount Ararat today, the peak of the mountain is 16,854 feet tall. So you are up so high that the snow and the ice never really goes away at any point in the year up near the peak. So you have that to contend with. But also, it's a volcanic mountain. So there have been volcanoes in the past. There are a lot of earthquakes in that area. So there have been earthquakes in the past. There are a lot of earthquakes in that area.

So there have been earthquakes. There's glaciers moving, which can crush things like remains of a boat. And there have been people going up there for centuries, millennia even, and supposedly pulling pieces from the ark. We have some early accounts of that that are mentioned in josephus and barassus so what what would be left even if we knew exactly where it was and then we could get to it what would be left i don't know if there would be a whole lot left there might be something this is like a needle in a haystack very very, very difficult to locate something. Fair enough. That's really helpful. Now, probably, gosh, probably 20 years ago, got a call from a friend of mine, and he was taking a group of apologists to Iran to look at kind of certain remains.

It's at 15,000 feet elevation, petrified wood. My dad went on this trip. I think wood. My dad went on this trip. I think Frank Turek went on this trip. I was so interested in going, but my wife was like, we are pregnant with our first, and you want to go to Iran? And I was like, fair enough. I won't. Probably the right call.

But that's one dig amongst many. What do you make of that potential find as being the Ark? So that mountain that they went to, it's quite tall. Like you said, it's about 15,000 feet elevation at the peak. The location of the object that has been investigated on that mountain is about 13,000 feet. So again, quite high high although it's not as tall as ararat but uh the problem with that place is the the location of the mountain doesn't really fit so this is in the the albors mountain range and this is not only about 2 000000 feet lower than Ararat, but it's a place that's south of the Caspian Sea. So it's actually out of the region of ancient Ararat or ancient Urartu. And the mountain of

Ararat, it needs to be inside Ararat. The mountains of Ararat needs to be inside Ararat or Urartu. So the geography disqualifies that. you know, I don't know about the petrified wood that's found that's, that's interesting and so forth. Uh, there's been petrified wood that's been retrieved from very high up on Mount Ararat as well. But you know, how, how can we connect that with the arc? It's, it's mostly somebody's word or speculation. How do we test that? Right. Yeah, that's fair. It's not going to say Noah's Ark, obviously. I did think it was interesting it was above the tree line. It's like, okay, how did this get up there and why? I mean, there's certain things that give you

pause, but I think that's very fair. If the geography doesn't match up, then it's going to be some other ancient ship for some other reason, but not the ark, if that's the case. Now, when do you date the ark, and what kind of ranges are there for different Bible scholars when they look at this? So I would put it about 3,300 BC, and this is based on the chronological data that we get in the Bible tracing back to the time of noah and the flood this specifically this would be using some of the septuagint numbers rather than the masoretic text so if somebody's using the masoretic text they're going to put it later like around 24 50 bc and then others would not really be looking so much at that year data in the Bible, and they would put it earlier than both of these. So, you know, you've got a kind of a few

different dates that you might look at. So probably yours is on the more recent of a kind of dating that takes ages of people in the Old Testament seriously, looks at the chronologies. If some people were to say, look, there's gaps in the chronology, these ages are not meant to be taken as specific numbers, I mean, how far back are some Bible scholars going to place this? I think people might push it to 5,000, 6,000 BC, something like that, based on some different archaeological and geological dates. Okay, fair enough. So roughly 3,000 to maybe 6,000 BC, so 5,000 to like 8,000 years ago, is roughly the standard

range people look at that this okay uh do like outside of bible believing scholars are there any scholars you're aware of who take this story as history or potential history or is it literally considered a myth outside of more uh evangelical or conservative scholars well the myth viewpoint is certainly going to be the most popular today amongst scholars but there there are other scholars of various belief systems that think the story of noah's ark is historical or has some kind of basis in history so this the range is going to be different um for example in the Quran, you actually have a version of this story. So there are going to be some scholars that are Muslims that think that Noah's Ark is a real

story. There are going to be some agnostic or secular scholars who think that it has some basis in history, and they might look to the Mesopotamian accounts of the flood and say, okay, maybe these are based on some flood that happened in ancient times. So there was some sort of flood, guy with a boat type of a thing. So there are people out there like that. But again, it's going to be a minority of scholars today. Okay, fair enough. So we're going to jump into a couple other suggested finds that people have, and what the biblical data actually reveals that we should expect to find. But if we did find the ark, what do you think this would demonstrate or prove? How significant would this actually be?

Well, I think first, it would be hugely significant if we could really show that it was Noah's Ark, because basically it would provide substantial evidence that the narrative about Noah's Ark in Genesis is historical. And this would also indicate that the early sections of Genesis are historical records rather than just all mythological tales i i do think of like many other discoveries that if this was found you would also have people who would come up with alternative explanations as for what this was and sure not agreeing that it has any connection to the noah's ark story but i I think it would be a monumental discovery. That's a good way to put it, monumental. So when I searched, was Noah's Ark found, just literally doing a Google search, obviously that's not scholarly, but I was just curious,

what's going to pop up? What are people saying? What's some of the newest studies? Right to the top was an article that came up from last year 2023 in which archaeologists from the mount ararat and noah's ark research team in turkey uncovered a 538 foot structure that resembles an ark they have kind of a top-down picture that in some ways is enough at least for for me, to pause and go, that's interesting. They said it dates to about 3,000, between 3,000 and 5,500 BC. So it would date within the time frame that you gave. They say more studies are needed.

When you hear that, are you like, awesome, this is good? Are you like super skeptical? How do you process that and what do you make of it? So I'm always extremely skeptical of new claims that the Ark has been found because this has happened so often. I mean, it's a regular occurrence and yet none of them in the modern era have turned out to be the Ark. So there's a claim almost every year that somebody's found it oh and then in fact most of these claims that we see today are not even associated with actual mount ararat now this this one is interesting it's good that you brought it up

because uh this first of all that team didn't uncover this site and it's also not on mount ararat so it's about 20 miles south of mount ararat and you get a good viewpoint of the mountain from that place but it's a it's a pretty well-known location called the durupinar site and it's been known since at least 1948 and a lot of investigations have been done here. So it's a geological formation that is composed of limonite. So this is iron ore. It's not petrified wood. And this is why a lot of different organizations and research teams have written it off. This is a rock formation. It's not the ark. So that's those are two huge problems. The other issue is that the formation is five hundred and thirty eight feet long. Right. Well, at least according to the measurements in Genesis, the ark is supposed to be about four hundred and fifty feet long. So that's quite a disparity there and so this is just that's a regular occurrence with our claims is there's a lot of regurgitation and recycling of things that have already been looked at and analyzed and shown to be wanting and then it comes out again and they try to make it sound like it's

a new thing but it's not you know they did rock and soil samples. That's really interesting. And so their claim was that there was some material in there that indicated human habitation or human presence between 3000 and 5500 BC, which, okay, sure, there could have been, but that doesn't mean that it's the Ark, right? So lots of problems with that one. So bottom line for those of us who are not archaeologists, be very skeptical and cautious when you hear people making claims frequently that they found it or it's a strong candidate. It's likely not, maybe, but be skeptical about it.

Why do you think this story has captured the imagination so much? I mean, there's so many stories in the Bible that are interesting. Is it, I mean, I could just kind of guess it's the size of the ark. It's the drama of the ark. It's how early the story is. I mean, why is there so much? Maybe people think because it's, you know, just because how big it is,

we'd be more likely to find it than the Ark of the Covenant, obviously, would be tougher. Is there anything else why you think this story is so captivating people that it just generates so much attention, not so much from professional archaeologists, but from lay people or amateurs? Yeah, I agree with everything you said. And I might just add in that it's an incredible story. It's also a story that we see recounted by the ancient Mesopotamians. And it's something that is supposed to be out in the open, or at least it was. And so it's not something where they would have to go excavating 20 feet into the earth to reveal all this. It's something where at least people think think this may or may not be true but that if they went to the right place they could actually see it however that may not be the case

now yeah okay fair enough it is interesting that i'm thinking about it our mutual friend joel kramer when i had him on he talked about babylon and the prophecies in jeremiah and isaiah that it would be destroyed and never rebuilt and there would be jackals and owls there. And that is exactly what you find today, thousands of years later. At the end, he's like, this is a reminder of God's judgment, wiping out that city. In some ways, finding a boat like this at first seems like, oh, this is awesome. What a cool find.

And then you pause and you think, wait a minute. This is a God who judges. This is a God who deals with sin. And so finding it would be more than just confirming the Bible's true. It'd be like, okay, wait a minute. What does this mean for me and my life? And of course, you and I don't think we need a physical ark to get there, but that would also be a piece of the story. Well, you've got an excellent recent book out called The Essential Archaeological Guide to Bible Lands. I've never seen a book like this that goes through the lands of the Bible, Jerusalem, Babylon, famous cities, less known cities. You go through Ararat and talk about things that the Bible reveals about this area tied to the story of Noah's Ark.

And it starts in Genesis 8-4. So maybe tell us what Genesis 8-4 first reveals about this region. Well, Genesis 8-4 is the first time where we see the name Ararat. So it tells us that the Ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat after the flood, after the waters started to recede because it told us that the waters went above the tops of the mountains. So what does this tell us? First of all, it tells us that the Ark landed in an area called Ararat or Urartu is also how this is discussed historically and archaeologically, and that it shouldu was, not just because of some mentions in the Bible,

but primarily because of archaeological excavations and ancient historical documents, we can see that Mount Ararat, the Mount Ararat of today, is right in the geographical center of ancient Urartu. And we have those borders quite well defined. So we understand what's in the region of Ararat or the land of Ararat, as the Bible also calls it, and what is outside of that. But Genesis 8.4 doesn't say Mount Ararat, right? It says the mountains of Ararat. So we know it's not just one peak. Well, what I find very interesting is that if you're looking at Mount Ararat, then right next to it is another huge mountain. So Ararat, Mount Ararat, the main peak, it's 16,854 feet in elevation. Well, right next to it is what is sometimes called Little Ararat.

This mountain is 12,782 feet. It's huge. And there are other smaller peaks around. Okay. So it's a mountainous region right there. It's not just one mountain, but the tallest one is what people today call Mount Ararat. So I think that's really important to make one connection. Another thing is we know that this name goes back very far. So Moses is writing the Pentateuch Genesis, and he calls it the mountains of Ararat, right? Well, outside of the Bible, we have this name attested at least as early as the 13th century BC and an Assyrian source of Shalmaneser I. So he mentions the land of Ararat or the land of Urartu. So it's a very

ancient name. It wasn't one that was invented later. It probably goes back much earlier than the time of Moses even. It's just difficult for us to trace some of that stuff. But there's a lot of information that we have if we can connect some of the dots there. So some of the earliest writing is 1300 BC, but if this was at least 3000 BC, part of the problem is that did we have writing then to even record the name? Those are some of the Ararat described in the Bible. Is that a fair summation? is we have other evidence from antiquity that connects Mount Ararat with the Mount Ararat of today and the landing place of Noah. I mean, we have, for example, Barassus, who is quoted by Josephus. Barassus is a third century BC Babylonian, and he talks about this, and he

connects Ararat with what we would see as Ararat today. Josephus does as well, although there's some confusion in another passage where he uses a different geographic term. But one of them is quite clear. We've got other sources like some Armenian historians, for example, Faustus and Moses of Corinth. And they associate Mount Ararat with Noah's landing place, and we understand that it is the Mount Ararat in Armenia, not outside of that area. We go a little bit later into history, 5th and 6th century as well, more sources so there's a lot to connect that particular mountain with the mount ararat of the bible and noah's landing place there are though unfortunately other places as well that we see in antiquity or at least medieval times that add to some confusion. For example, the Quran places the landing of Noah's Ark at

Mount Kudi or Mount Judi. And so some people have suggested, oh, that's actually the Mount Ararat of the Bible. Yeah. I mean, you were talking the Quran, what, 7th century AD or so doesn't compare to some of the earlier sources. And I think some of the other historical challenges with the Quran, that seems to be a very minimal reason to question the consistent early tradition of where the mountains of Arad are. Are there any other contradictory sources you're aware of from before the Quran, like BC at all? Or is this a pretty unanimous, consistent tradition for at least a thousand years plus? It's very consistent except for a passage in Josephus, which almost

seems to contradict what he says elsewhere. But I think it may be because we misunderstand a general area geographical term that he's using. But, you know, we've got Strabo. He's a famous geography geographer in the first century BC. He actually mentions Ararat and Little Ararat. So I think it was quite well known. I mean, we've got a coin from the kingdom of Armenia in the first century BC, a coin of Tigranes IV, and it shows Ararat and little Ararat. So it was a very significant mountain at that point. We know that. I don't think there's going to be so much confusion in ancient times about this. The confusion seems to enter in later on when people from a different geographical region, south, farther south

in the Middle East, are writing about this and maybe they're not familiar with the actual geography of the Ararat region. Are there other ancient stories or legends of people allegedly finding the Ark and maybe having petrified wood or like, what are some of those stories? Yeah, there are quite a few of those. I would say two of them to me are the most interesting. So I'll start with one that's very speculative, but in the Talmud, which was composed between the 3rd and 6th century AD, but it's got earlier material in there. There is a claim of a story that the Assyrian king Sennacherib, so he's around 700 BC, went and found a beam from Noah's Ark, and then he used this to fashion an idol of a god.

And they kind of tell this as a commentary on the story about when he gets assassinated by his two sons so anyhow that's that's a claim that we find yeah he went and got a beam from the ark don't know if there's anything historical to that or not but it's interesting the second one comes uh actually it's from around the same time as far as when these things were written down. But this is a story about a monk from around 300 AD. His name was Hakob. And he is pretty famous in Armenia because the story is that he was told by one of his superiors that people were questioning the story of the Ark. And so he decided to go up Mount Ararat. And he goes up Mount Ararat, and he retrieves this, what he called a piece of the Ark, and it's petrified wood,

and then he brought it back. And today it's in museum in armenia etchmiad scene museum and it is indeed a piece of petrified wood supposedly from very high up on ararat now again this is one of those situations where it's petrified wood but how in the world would you confirm that this is a piece of noah's ark so i'd say it's interesting. It's really the only ancient physical evidence that we might have, but again, it's very tenuous. That is super fascinating. I didn't know there was even that story, let alone the piece that they show in a museum today tied to that story. That's really, really interesting. Okay, so let's continue along with the biblical evidence. We talked about Genesis 8-4, where the mountains of Ararat first emerged.

We have confidence today because of the early unanimous, for the most part, testimony of this is the area of Urartu and Ararat. There's the high mountain, you said about 16,000 feet, and then a little Ararat around 12,000 feet. But then you go a little further in the story, 14 verses later in Genesis 8, 18 through 9, 21. It now describes Noah leaving the ark, planting a vineyard and making wine. So now it seems if we don't have the ark, it's giving us a little description of the land that at least we could start to investigate and see if it matches that time. So is there a fertile ground that can be dated to at least 3,000 to 4,000 plus BC that at least lines up with this

description? There is. So if you go east of the slopes of Ararat, what some archaeologists have uncovered is the oldest winemaking facility that's ever been discovered. So it's called Arani Cave 1, and it dates to 3000 BC and before. Earliest wine production facility right there on the eastern slopes of Ararat. So there's some at least evidence of early settlement civilization winemaking. Now, can we connect this to Noah? I don't know. But it's a very interesting discovery there. And it at least shows that, yeah, people were around that area doing something, living, making wine around the time that noah left the ark okay so minimally we're given details in the story we should expect to find this and we do doesn't prove that it's true but it kind of lines

up and is enough to pause and go okay maybe there's more to the story so let's let's keep going the next clue that we have is now you fast forward to Genesis chapter 10 and describes the descent of nations after Noah. So are there any hints in the archaeological record that match up with the people or places listed in this chapter? Yeah, so we see that people go down to Sumer, to Sumeria, and then that's kind of where the first cities are talked about in Genesis 10, like Uruk, which Uruk is widely considered or called the first city. So early city there in the Bible, early city in archaeology. Now Uruk is very important for many reasons, but one of these is because this is essentially where we see the first writing come about, or at least the first writing after the flood.

So people did have the ability to write around the time of Noah or just after. And then there's something called the Uruk expansion. And the Uruk expansion is essentially a radiation of aspects of that civilization or culture outside of Uruk, so going north, east, west, etc. And I think this is something that's reflected in the table of nations migrating out of southern Mesopotamia in Genesis 10. And then we have, as well, one of those places that people go and settle is the area of Armenia. And there's not universal consensus on which person or place this is in Genesis 10, but Josephus in the first century, he connected it with Hul, who founded and settled the area of Armenia in Genesis 10.23. Well, if we go up there today and we look at excavations,

one of the ones that I worked on, we have this incredibly early civilization that seems like it's just after this Uruk expansion, and it's called the Kura-Araxes culture. And it's all around this region. There's a major city, if you will, or center of this civilization at Shen Gavit, which is in present day Yerevan. But we see a lot of consistency with the early narratives. So the mountain, the flood stories in the Ark in Mesopotamia, the fact that there's early winemaking up there on the slopes of Ararat. Then we have Uruk established and people going out from Uruk.

And then we have these new places established, one of them back up there in the north in present-day Armenia as well. That's an interesting lining up again with what we see in Genesis chapter 10. That's fascinating. I'm not aware of the story of Noah's Ark or Ararat being discussed until we get to the time of the Israelite monarchy. Is there anything in that period that is going to give us insight about the story and what we might find and expect in that region? Well, we talked about briefly that commentary in the Talmud about Sennacherib supposedly finding a wooden beam from the ark, and of course that would be the monarchy period.

But what we do have is we have a couple of instances in the Bible during the monarchy period where Ararat is mentioned. So it's the land of Ararat or Urartu as it would be in archaeological terms today. So we've got 2 Kings 19.37 talks about how the son assassins of Sennacherib escaped into the land of Ararat or the land of Uartu. And then Isaiah repeats the same passage. And then Jeremiah, just a bit later, he talks about summoning against her the kingdoms of Ararat, Mini and Ashkenaz. So the area was known to the ancient Israelites and Judeans. They mention it just these three instances during that kingdom period. But it helps us to identify the Ararat of Genesis with the Ararat of the monarchy period. What about when we shift to the New Testament?

And to give people perspective, New Testament eras roughly 2,000 years ago. But from the time of Jesus and the apostles, there's 3,000 years minimally, roughly, to the time of the ark. So we are closer to the time of Jesus than Jesus and the apostles would have been to the ark. So with that said, does the New Testament give us any clues about what we might expect and the region as well? It doesn't. So a few New Testament books mention Noah and the flood, even some the ark, but none of them discuss the location of the landing place. Okay. So the New Testament is not going to give us any real helpful hints as to where we're going to discover it or clues what to find okay that's helpful so let's take a step back in summary what do you make of the various claims about finding the arc

are some more reasonable than others or as a whole in some ways you've answered this do you think they're not even close to being the arc itself like Do they have a 2% chance of being right? Assess this for us as best you can. I would say that the vast majority of them are dubious, that they are either mistaken or they were intentionally fabricated. There are a couple of them where we can't really make a comment too much one way or the other like it could be something

it might not be for example that that ancient discovery of the petrified wood from mount ararat the monk found in 300 a.d something like that it's hard to say there also been some some allegedly well they are eyewitness accounts but of of what? Allegedly seeing the Ark, say, in the 19th century and some even the 20th century, which we can't necessarily disprove some of those, but we also can't verify them. So I don't know. I mean, there was a very recent one as well, sort of recent, you know, more than 10 years ago but this group called nami out of china they claim to find noah's ark and there was a lot of about this in the news at that time you know they showed like some video of some wood structure and stuff but this got investigated and what they

found is that some people were hired to bring wood up the mountain to make kind of a staged arc yeah and and this something like this happened as well uh not trying to deceive people but Greenpeace actually built a sort of replica arc uh on Mount Ararat as a symbol they weren't trying to pass it off as real but just showing you things that have happened. And so people might make mistakes. Other times people might intentionally want to deceive others so that they can make a documentary or something like that. But again, be very skeptical of these claims. We really need to be able to verify them. Okay. So I miss this story out of China. I didn't see that or follow it. I don't recall it. I mean, why, why would they go to such a hassle, the cost and time to take wood and carry

it there and make a documentary and release it? Is it just for fame? Is it for views? Like what's motivating this? Are they misguided apologists trying to prove that something's true that's clearly not uh i would hope it wouldn't be that last one because it'd be very strange to fabricate evidence for something that you think is true but yeah i don't know what their motivations were but uh it okay it was unfortunately a very exemplary case of all the hysteria around the Ark and all the bogus claims. Wow, that is so interesting. I'm going to go look that up a little bit. So I realize this is more of a literary question, but when you're thinking about the historicity of the Ark, finding it is obviously one way to show that it's real, but there's also these other stories of massive floods and boats around Mesopotamia and beyond that, to greater and lesser degree, kind of mirror the story that we find in Genesis. How do you, you know, in some ways compare and contrast those, or how significant are they in your mind in terms of establishing the historicity of just some flood in general

or even the Genesis flood? I think that the Mesopotamian tablets discussing the flood are very significant in looking at the historicity of the Noah story because we have these tablets from, say, Atrahasis, Ziasudra, Gilgamesh, the Sumerian king list, and they all seem to point back to one story of common origin that may have been passed down orally, may have been written down in some form, we don't know, but there are so many details that they share with the story of Noah and Genesis especially I would say Atrahasis which is the most complete and so we have things like there's a flood a huge flood coming to wipe out humanity because God or the

gods are angry and then this one god goes and warns a particular man, okay, this would be the Noah character, but he's given different names depending on the Mesopotamian story you're looking at. He warns him about the flood and tells him to build a boat. So he builds this boat. And then the flood comes and he and his family are saved. And then the flood comes, and he and his family are saved, and then the boat lands upon a mountain, and in some of the stories, like in Atrahasis, he puts animals on the boat two by two as well, lands on a mountain, you know, makes a sacrifice, thanks God, and then you go on with human civilization after this, so a lot of similarities very very early so at least 1900 bc we have the actual tablets so the story goes back before that and i think this at least

tells us that in the mind of people in ancient mesopotamia in the ancient world that they thought that this happened there's this common story that comes throughout um the greeks the ancient world that they thought that this happened. There's this common story that comes throughout. The Greeks, the ancient Greeks even had a flood story quite similar. Again, they use a different name for Noah, just like everyone else. But this suggests to me that there was an event that happened. People remembered it. They wrote it down in various cultures and languages. They tweaked a few things. They might have modified it for their theology, but it seems to be a way of attesting the historicity of the event. That's helpful. So as a whole, I'm curious if somebody

said to you, Titus, why do you think Noah's Ark was real? Why do you trust the story? Because for me, I'd say a few things. I would make a case for the reliability of the Old Testament and Genesis as a whole. I might point to the New Testament passages. If these words are recorded accurately and they refer to the story as being real, that's another piece of it. I would look at some of these other extra-biblical flood stories that kind of line up in interesting ways, and yet the story of Genesis has a little bit more verisimilitude about it, if we even concede that there was a big flood than some of the other ones. And then the archaeological remains in the area that we clearly don't have the ark, but they kind of match up with the story and tend to tell us,

oh, this is not implausible, and we find the kinds of things we would expect. Now, given that this was minimally 5,000 years ago, and it's in the first 12 chapters of Genesis, for which there's more debate than probably any chapters in the Bible, that seems pretty reasonable to me. Tell me what your case would be, or if you would kind of quibble with that case, add or take anything away from it. No, I agree with that. So we've got all these ancient flood stories, very similar to that of Noah, most notably the ones from Mesopotamia. But there are others such as the ancient Greek story that seem to corroborate that this event happened. We have the geographic locations that are real places like

Ararat. We have, as you said, in the New Testament, it's discussed as well as in the Old Testament. But in the New Testament, Noah is talked about by Jesus. Noah's talked about by the author of Hebrews and by Peter so clearly Jesus and the Apostles thought that that Noah was a real person and this flood actually happened I would point to as well the for geologists anyway some geologists argue that there's geologic evidence of this flood occurring. And so we've got different lines of evidence, external ancient sources. We have internal Old and New Testament sources. We have the geographic locations themselves.

And then we also may have the geology in addition to that. So we've got a lot of different lines of evidence pointing to this as an actual historical event. Now, you brought it up, and I realize this might be a little bit outside of your lane focusing on archaeology, but anything you want to add about the geology itself that might just flesh out the plausibility of such a flood that would help? Or just in general, you're aware that the geology is supportive of a massive flood? Well, for the geologists who work on this, I think one of the main things that they often bring up is the fossil record. And they're looking specifically at fossils that are within sedimentary rock from

all over the world and in cases which I think is especially interesting where they'll even find these types of remains high elevation at the tops of mountains as well so looking like there was some kind of water coverage that happened very very quickly and then fossilized these animals that makes sense that's helpful so are you going to go back you're going to keep searching for it what what is on your list of digs that you're going to make and if you go back what would you be what sites would you go back to? What would you be looking for? Tell us about that. Well, I've got three projects in the works right now. So one is in Armenia and then others in Jordan and Palestine.

But as far as Ararat itself, I do plan to go up to the summit of the mountain, and as I said, just kind of look around and survey things. We'll see what it looks like, what we can see, what we can't see. I think it's just an interesting place to go to. I don't have expectations of really finding anything, and I'm pretty busy with other projects, excavating biblical cities, as I said. But I'm all for people continuing to explore this. And if they find it, awesome. I just hope that people working on it

and reading about it have a critical eye and they're going to evaluate the evidence well and and not give us another kind of sensationalistic creation out of thin air that that's totally fair how would you get up there can you take a helicopter do you have to hike up for days and hire somebody can you drive half the way yeah hike hike up there with a group wow so it would probably take days and days because you're shifting in the elevation you can only walk so far like do you have any sense like just days it's about three days to the summit after you after you depart transportation that's incredible i don't know why i'm tempted on the inside to want to do that that sounds more

interesting to me than going and actually doing a dig and just pulling up dirt and like the adventure of it bringing my son or something i don't know if you go and you could bring a rookie like me along let me know i just might be tempted to go climb mount ararat and take some pictures and experience it. Minimally, it just looks like a stunningly beautiful place. Minimally. So if you go, let me know and maybe I'll check up there with you. All right, will do. It would be an adventure. I will say, though, that when you go to dig at an archaeological site, you're assured to find something ancient. So there's always that benefit. Okay, fair enough. I appreciate that. I took that dig at digging and you rightly defended it. So fair enough. Hey, tell us a little about your book. You sent this to me. It's called The Essential

Archaeological Guide to Bible Lands. And I've been flipping through this and thought, man, now when I preach on passages, I'm just going to pull out some of this and look at, you know, it's trusted material on these different cities. It's more like a reference guide, my guess, than somebody would read straight through. So tell us about it, maybe what makes it unique and why you think it could help people. Well, in that book, I cover around 70 different archaeological sites connected to the Bible. So biblical locations, most of them are cities, but there are a few other places that I talk about, like Mount Sinai and so forth, that are obviously geographic locations. The way that I arranged it, I did it by different

geographic regions. So Mesopotamia and Persia, Egypt, the Levant, Anatolia, Greece, Rome. And I did that because when I was looking at other books that address biblical cities or biblical locations, I noticed two things. One is that the vast majority of these were written quite a while ago, and so they were outdated. Many of them were more than 20 years old now, most of them really. The other thing is that usually the geographically focused Bible archaeology books, they hone in on the Holy Land, and they don't really look at sites in Mesopotamia. Egypt gets a little more coverage sometimes, but not that much. Anatolia, other than the seven cities of Revelation, doesn't usually get addressed much. And then you'll have some

books that focus on Greece and Rome, maybe without all the other places. So I wanted to pick the most important and also some of the more controversial sites from all of the different locations or regions that are talked about in the Bible and then update all this as well. So some of the newer information that has come out in the last 20 or 30 years, whether it's new discoveries or new analysis of things that have been discovered before. I'm really curious, Titus, what feedback we'll get in the show. So if you have stayed with us and you're watching this, let us know what cities you'd like us to dive into, specifically like we did here with the mountains of Ararat, cities or regions.

Some of the places you discussed that people might recognize are places like Ephesus, Tiberias, Tyre, Thessalonica, Athens is very interesting. Of course, Jericho, you and I have done a show on that before. Nineveh. If there are specific cities you'd like us to kind of probe into and unpack what they reveal about the Bible and archaeology and Titus has been to many of these places, put a comment below and maybe we'll come back and we'll revisit some of those cities. So this is a little bit of a different kind of video than I've done before. And I really want to know if people find it interesting and helpful. It was interesting to me. I wanted to know your

thoughts on the search for the Ark. So I found this absolutely fascinating. Always appreciate you coming on. This has been a ton of fun. Folks, before you check away, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got some other archaeological topics coming up. We're talking about near-death experiences again. I get a ton of questions on that. More interviews on the resurrection. Gary Habermas is coming back.

We've got a former pre-radical Muslim who was a part of the army in Iran, Iranian National Guard. I forget the name of it, and now he's a Christian. So we've got stories you will not want to forget. You won't want to miss. Hit subscribe. If you thought about studying apologetics,

Titus comes and teaches a class for us at Biola in our apologetics program. You can come study with both of us. Info is below. So check that out. Once again, Titus, always fun. Thanks for coming on. Hey, thanks for having me. Enjoy the conversation.