Gen 6:9 "We've found Noah's Ark"!

Gen 6:9   This is the account of Noah. (NIV)

One of the most colourful, powerful, evocative stories ever told. One that pops up in various guises all over the world in apparently unrelated cultures and civilisations. The story of a great flood and a massive boat that carried its passengers, both human and animal, to safety.

Well by some extraordinary coincidence I have arrived at this bit of the bible on the exact same day that a national newspaper has the following headline " 'We've found Noah's Ark!'... claim evangelical explorers on mission to snow-capped Ararat (but British scientists say 'show us your evidence')". It's a headline that sums up the challenge I face in understanding the biblical account of the flood and Noah's Ark in the light of current scientific consensus. As Hugh Ross puts it in his book "The Genesis Question"

"As much scepticism and ridicule as secularists may express about the scientific plausibility of the Genesis creation accounts, they tend to heap more derision on the Genesis Flood story. What they have heard of read strikes them as utterly preposterous. The story seems to contradict well-established science at every turn, and it seems to even go against the popular notion of the benevolent Christian God" The Genesis Question, Hugh Ross, Page 139

Was there really a worldwide flood 4000 years ago that covered the mountain tops and lasted for almost six months? Are all the animals today descended from those that Noah saved aboard his massive wooden boat? Can such an event really be totally invisible to the mainstream scientific community?

Well, a team of Christians exploring the Turkish mountains are convinced of the stories historical validity and are 99.9% sure they have discovered Noah's ark. They have found a massive wooden structure 13,000 feet above sea level on mount Ararat and say carbon dating places it around 2,800BC.  For decades people have been searching the region of Mt Ararat to find remains of Noah's ark. Confident claims for its discovery, such as the ones made in the 1980's by Ron Wyatt of a ship shaped formation 6500 feet above sea level, usually end up being discredited. Whether this goes the same way I will have to wait and see. Hugh Ross makes the point in his book "the genesis question" that we should not expect to find the ark at all because anyone with any sense would have used the wood long ago. If you get shipwrecked on a desert island you use all the bits of wreckage you can get your hands on either to build or burn.

Moving on from the quest for the Ark then there is still one major issue that needs to be peeled away before getting to the juicy flesh of this incredible story. Did the flood cover the whole world, submerging the Andes and Mount Everest, or was it more local confined to the Mesopotamian flood plain? I will look at the evidence for each hypothesis over the next two days, starting with the more traditional view that it was global in extent.