Ron Wyatt

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Ron Wyatt
Ron Wyatt

Ronald Eldon Wyatt (1933 - 1999)


Ron Wyatt was a self-styled archaeologist who was probably one of the most controversial recent figures in Biblical archaeology and the Creationist movement. Most Creationists are familiar with Wyatt's claims concerning the discovery of Noah's Ark at the Durupinar site; but he also claimed to have discovered several other Biblical sites of great importance.

By the time of his death in 1999 Wyatt claimed to have located:


Contents

The Life of Ron Wyatt

Wyatt was a nurse-anesthetist at Nashville's Summit Medical Center when in 1960 he saw a picture in Life magazine of a boat-like shape on a mountain near Mount Ararat. The resulting wide-spread speculation in evangelical Christian circles that this might be Noah's Ark started Wyatt on his career as a self-styled archaeologist. From 1977 until his death in 1999 he made over one hundred trips to the Middle East, his interests widening to take in a wide variety of references from the Old and New Testaments.

Wyatt was a member of the Seventh Day Adventist religion, which believes in the continuation of prophecy, and raised funding for his expeditions by speaking at churches and revivals around the United States. In his presentations and some of his writings he described active conversations with God and angels leading him to his discoveries.

Wyatt died in 1999 and is survived by his wife Mary Nell Wyatt and two sons.

Evaluation of Wyatt's Claims

Due to his lack of academic training and the phenomalistic culture of his religious community, Wyatt's mode of exaggeration in his claims and writings tended to immediately call his credibility into question amongst Christian scholars and scientists, even from his own sect."[1].

While some of Wyatt's claims seem outlandish and unsupported, for others there is substantial physical evidence that has been documented by other researchers in the last decade. The more important of his claimed discoveries are discussed below.

The primary problem with Wyatt's claims, from a scholar's perspective, was his habit of arriving at sweeping conclusions based on little or no evidence. That is to say, he quickly jumped from hypothesis to unquestionable religious conviction. Two of the wilder examples were his claim to have found the Cave of MachPelah in Hebron and his claim to have found the Ark of the Covenant in an underground tunnel in Jerusalem (see below).

Noah's Ark

Wyatt's first expedition was to examine the Durupinar site in Turkey that he had seen photographs of in a 1960 issue of Life Magazine. Wyatt and David Fasold made expeditions to the site in the 1970's and 1980's and popularlized the idea in American evangelical circles that they had discovered the ark's resting place.

Wyatt claimed to have recovered metal rivets, metal slag, petrified wood, animal hair and coprolites from the site. He also made a site survey using some kind of ground-penetrating radar instrument and claimed the results showed a regular grid of metal objects.

While the Turkish government built a visitors center at the site, a full excavation has not been performed. As would be the case with his later discoveries, Wyatt concluded that this was the site of Noah's Ark without completing a full investigation.

Twenty years later, the site has still not been excavated. Morris and Shea have suggested that the site was a volcanic mudflow. Until a professional excavation is made, it is probably premature to completely dismiss this site. However, the evidence that Wyatt claimed to have found could just as easily be evidence of an ancient settlement on the site, or even an ancient religious community with a belief, similar to Wyatt's, that the formation was the remains of Noah's Ark.

The Cave of MachPelah

Wyatt located a cave in the backyard of an Arab family in Hebron and obtained their permission to open the entrance with a backhoe. Having gained entrance, the cave was empty. According to his wife Mary Nell, Wyatt declared that God had told him this was the cave and the reason it was empty was that the patriarchs buried in it were raised in the first-fruits resurrection at the time of Christ's Crucifixion and Resurrection. Thus Wyatt claimed the lack of evidence as evidence in favor of his identification.

The Ark of the Covenant

In Jerusalem, Wyatt dug on the property of the Garden Tomb Association near the area of Zedekiah's quarry and believed he found the site of the crucifixion. He gained entrance to a tunnel system and claimed to have discovered the Ark of the Covenant beneath the crucifixion site. He also claimed to have seen and taken a sample of the dried blood of Jesus that had dripped down through a crack into the chamber and onto the mercy seat of the Ark.

The Garden Tomb Association of Jerusalem state in a letter they issue to visitors on request:

The Council of the Garden Tomb Association (London) totally refute the claim of Mr Wyatt to have discovered the original Ark of the Covenant or any other biblical artefacts within the boundaries of the area known as the Garden Tomb Jerusalem. Though Mr Wyatt was allowed to dig within this privately owned garden on a number of occasions (the last occasion being the summer of 1991) staff members of the Association observed his progress and entered his excavated shaft. As far as we are aware nothing was ever discovered to support his claims nor have we seen any evidence of biblical artefacts or temple treasures.

In 2005 and 2006 Wyatt Archaeological Research contributed funding and labor to a professional and licensed excavation of the alleged crucifixion site and discovered two large circular cisterns with six foot walls of unknown date. After evaluating the results, WAR removed from their website the claims concerning Wyatt's discovery of the Ark[2]. However the excavation did reveal evidence of Wyatt's previous excavation, verifying at least his claim to have entered an underground tunnel there.

The Exodus

Wyatt claimed to have discovered a series of sites along the route of the Israelite's journey out of Egypt to Mt. Sinai, including the Red Sea Crossing, The Rock of Rephidim, Mt. Sinai, and the Golden Calf Altar.

Of all of Wyatt's claimed discoveries, those relating to the Exodus route have the most substantial evidence. In 2003 the Swedish molecular biologist, Lennart Moller, published the book, The Exodus Case, examining several of Wyatt's claims, mainly on the Exodus route. The book includes photographs of bones of men and horses recovered from the waters of the Gulf of Aqaba near Nuweiba, Egypt. The book also includes photos of several objects on the seafloor claimed to be chariot wheels, one of which appears to be plated in gold.

Later, Lennart Moller put out a DVD with Questar about his finds. Examples of what can be seen on this video are here:

Side note: If you subscribe to netflix, this documentary movie is being shown in the watch now section. Which means it can be viewed over the Internet in its entirety. It has a 3.75 rating out of 5. Very few movies get a 4 and above.

The strongest piece of evidence for Wyatt's Exodus claims, however, is the altar he found at the base of Jebel el Lawz (Jebel Musa) in Saudi Arabia, a short distance from the alleged crossing site. The altar is a megalithic construction of several boulders ten tonnes or larger and is covered with petroglyphs and hieroglyphs depicting the worship of the Egyptian apis cult - the cult of the bull. Moller agreed with Wyatt's conclusion that this was the site of the Golden Calf apostasy initiated by the Israelites while Moses was up on the mountain receiving the ten commandments. The Saudi Arabian government has protected this site with a fence and armed guard, visible in the photographs in Moller's book, as well as in satellite photos publicly available on Google Earth.

Sodom and Gomorrah

Moller also examined the site claimed by Wyatt to be Sodom and Gomorrah and conducted a small excavation in which he documented burned human bones and melted iron. His book also shows photographs of gypsum balls with sulphur cores recovered from the site and matching Josephus' description of ash "fruits" at the site of the destroyed cities.

The Tower of Babel

Wyatt claimed to have seen the Tower of Babel from an airplane while landing in Southern Turkey on the way to the Ararat area. The site was subsequently flooded by the completion of the Ataturk Dam and Reservior. However others have visited the site in the past decade and claim that the top of the ruined brick tower protrudes above the water at the end of the dry season. Since the site has never actually been excavated, Wyatt's theory has neither been confirmed nor disproved.

Wyatt the Man

Various people have considered Ron Wyatt to be a saint, an Indiana Jones, or an outright fraud. Richard Rives, who accompanied Wyatt on several expeditions to the Middle East, described Wyatt as a sincere man who was warm to his friends but ferocious to his enemies and those who disbelieved his claims[3].

Ron Wyatt was an uneducated Christian man whose roots in the fundamentalist-charismatic milleu of mid-America made it difficult for him to separate his theories about specific sites from his faith in the Bible. This intense emotional attachment to his pet theories even in the face of evidence against them may have led some, like Ken Ham, to conclude that his claims were fraudulent[4] . A more charitable assessment might be that Wyatt was sincere, and even brilliant, but also severely limited by his background and culture from being able to objectively evaluate his work.

His non-academic background worked against him when he presented his claims to the public, but it may have also helped him in that he approached his search for Biblical sites with fresh eyes and without a preconceived notion of where they were supposed to be.

In decades and centuries to come, the discovery of the Red Sea Crossing and Mt. Sinai may prove to be Wyatt's greatest legacy. It is sad that such a great accomplishment may be tainted by some of his other incredible claims.

<center>

Wyatt Archaeological Research Inc.
2502 Lynnville Hwy.
Cornersville, Tennessee 37047
United States
Phone: (931) 293-4745
Email: mailto:archaeology@united.net
Web: http://wyattmuseum.com/

</center>

Publications

References

  1. ↑ "Has Noah's Ark Been Found?" by David Merling
  2. ↑ http://wyattmuseum.com/ac_update.htm
  3. ↑ http://www.wyattmuseum.com/ron-wyatt.htm
  4. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20030211052724/http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/1011hovind.asp

See Also


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