Researcher Claims Noah's Ark Find a Big Hoax

Dan Reany -

Their footage caught the world's attention. In March, Noah's Ark Ministries International, or NAMI, claimed to have found and entered Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat in Turkey.

Like many others, Ark Researcher Dr. Randall Price, at Liberty University, was initially skeptical of the Chinese team's find, and particularly wary of their local guide, Parasut.

In an exclusive interview, Dr. Price told CBN that he's been to the mountaintop, and says he has verified that the discovery is a fabrication.

Photos Questioned

"We call this a hoax because it is a hoax. It was done by Parasut probably to extort money from NAMI," Price said.

Parasut is NAMI's most valuable asset and has been on retainer with the ministry for more than $80,000 per year.

Bad blood between Price, Parasut, and NAMI is nothing new. In fact, Price was briefly a part of the NAMI team in 2008 when he first received Parasut's photos that got so much media attention earlier this year.

"He said, 'These are pictures inside Noah's Ark.' Now there was no context for them, just him inside of a wooden structure," Price said. "We've learned since that wooden structure came from Trabzone, near the Black Sea."

"It was an ancient ship not more than a couple hundred years old, but it's an old ship. He took the photos there," he explained. "Those were not on Mt. Ararat."

"But some of the wood from that structure was taken and a structure was constructed on Mt. Ararat," Price said. "And that's what the Chinese members of NAMI were taken to."

Price said in his most recent expedition to Mt. Ararat, he and others on the team went to the sites in the NAMI video, and even talked to and shot interviews with the locals who built the structures.

"They simply cut down into the ice. They put the wood there. They built part of a wall and part of a floor, which is the pictures you see... the pictures released by NAMI," Price said.

"And the person who was there with us was the one who constructed it," he said. "I can't reveal his identity because of the fact it would jeopardize his life actually."

Shady Characters ?

What would the local's motivation be to reveal this was a hoax, if he really was putting his life on the line, then?

"He was very reluctant to talk to us. We persuaded him to do that as long as we kept his name and his image out of things because he would be known," Price explained. "He says, 'All of us involved with this were told we were making a movie set.'"

"This was a movie set for these Chinese people who were going to come and do a film on Noah's ark, which, in fact, they were," Price continued. "But it wasn't until they saw it on television, on Turkish programs and things that they realized they were claiming this really was Noah's Ark. They said, 'We're not liars. We don't want people to think we're bad people.'"

Whatever their motivation, Price said they did good work.

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