I have read the blogs by yourself and Dr. Cline and would like to clarify for the record that the Arch Search LLC expedition was not seeking national publicity or funds when its planned work was announced in the Fox News piece. The original story was given to a local reporter for a local paper as part of an interview concerning the archaeological field work of our newly instituted program in field archaeology. The focus of the interview was to have been on our university’s recent (December 2008) excavation on the Qumran Plateau which I have been directing for the past six seasons. This excavation is working with both the Hebrew University and the University of Haifa to analyze the animal bone deposits unearthed on the southern plateau. If you read the original article published in the Lynchburg News & Advance you will see this inclusion (omitted by the Fox News report). The interviewer learned of my survey of the site on Mt. Ararat this past October and hoping to raise from the local community some funds for the planned summer excavation I gave them some of the material. I did not approve of the paper’s focus on the Noah’s Ark expedition and its spread to national exposure. I have repeatedly declined any and all request for interviews from the media on this subject, even though they offered the means to raise needed excavation funds. I felt it was appropriate to raise funds from our local community in which Liberty University functions for the benefit of the community. Liberty University is a major employer in Lynchburg with 12,000 resident students and 30,000 distant learning students and contains a law school, business school, nursing program, aviation school, and fully accredited master’s and doctoral academic programs.

Again, for the record, I was invited as an archaeologist by Richard Bright (the leader of the expedition) to access the site of the expedition when I was in Turkey to present a paper to a scholarly symposium in Dogubeyazit. As a result of going to the site, interviewing the Kurdish shepherd, and researching the history of prior exploration in this area, including satellite remote sensing, I agreed to conduct an archaeological excavation at the site, including the use of side-scanning radar. I do believe that this site offers the best possibility among sites previously researched for an archaeological excavation.

The claim “there will be a discovery” was made by Richard Bright (the expedition leader) who I referred to the original reporter as a source in the local interview. Even though I do believe in the historicity of the Genesis account and that Noah’s Ark possibly may exist, and think that traditional Mt. Ararat is a good candidate in the region of ancient Urartu (“mountains of Ararat” in Gen. 8:7), I do not make any claims as to what is there or may be discovered. Based on my assessment of the site and the shepherd’s claim I believe it is scientifically responsible to conduct an archaeological excavation to prove or disprove this claim and that it is no more unreasonable to seek dig funds for this site than for any other. The intention of the expedition is to investigate through proper scientific means the site, recover any samples and subject them to laboratory analysis and write an article on the finds in a peer-review journal. If a discovery is made that can be objectively verified then a release to the media will be made.

If the objection to this work is based on the interpretation that the Genesis account of the Flood and Noah’s Ark is allegory or based on an ancient local myth, then let that be the stated reason. It is not pseudoarchaeology when an organized archaeological work is being done at a site connected with a documentary account, unless one believes the account to be fiction and then can denigrate the one conducting the work as a fundamentalist.

Sincerely,

Randall Price, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Center for Judaic Studies
Liberty University