PaleoBabble readers know that I haven’t had positive things to say about the work of pseudo-archaeologists like Ron Wyatt and Robert Cornuke. The Bible Places blog recently posted some critiques of the latter. I think readers will find it informative and useful. (And for those wondering, I wouldn’t be in lock-step with points of the critique, though I agree that Wyatt and Cornuke ought to be ignored since they both fail to provide their “findings” to scholars for peer review, and at times fabricate findings). Real archaeologists (and I know a good number of them personally) within the evangelical community don’t embrace Wyatt and Cornuke. They only impress the non-specialists who are interested in the Bible and archaeology.
Critiques of Pseudo-Archaeologists Appealing to Many Evangelical Christians
I read Cornuke’s “Ark Fever: The True Story of One Man’s Search For Noah’s Ark” (2005), which he presents as a cautionary tale overenthusiam. He makes it abundantly clear his source was deluded and that Cornuke himself was insufficiently critical of the claim. Cornuke got burned, he knew it, and he didn’t hide it (curiously, the person who wrote the photo captions assumed the rock formation was indeed petrified wood, quite against the view in the body of the book).
But looking at Franz’s site just now, it seems Cornuke changed his mind the year after the book was published! Or, more likely, Cornuke needed new product and so took his negative report and made it ambiguous with a lot of insincere qualifiers, allowing believers to make an unwarranted conclusion.
http://www.rapidresponsereport.com/reviews/Cornuke_The_Search_For_Noah%27s_Ark_DVD_Review.pdf
The marketplace of ideas in action.
indeed
Glad to see someone fighting the fake archaeology out there. I always ask people, “If Noah’s area was destroyed by flood, would he not use the wood from the ark? Why would he leave it?” And many people still think it landed on Mt. Ararat. Read the account a little closer.