Henri Nissen

I was happy to find a book that advocated the Durupınar site as the resting-place for Noah's Ark. As a sometime "Arkeologist" or "Arkophile," I read these books for fun in hope that the Ark will be found one day. Since reading David Fasold's brilliant The Ark of Noah as a young teen I have been convinced that the Ark was not on Ararat as the "experts" supposed, but miles away. But...

My, my this is a horrible book. The 1 star I give it is for the pictures and certain few chapters in Part 3.

Here we go. [Remember, my call for public beatings are metaphorical in nature. Mostly.]

First, the book is beautifully put together: great photographs, glossy photo paper, and the like. But... But, Henri Nissen, the author, is Danish and a journalist. He proves that, as a general rule, most journalists shouldn't try their hand at writing history. There are exceptions. Nissen is not one of them. His narrative is unfocused, his presentation follows no general scheme, and he brings up things that do not touch but tangentially to the story. He should be dragged into the street and publicly beaten for taking a great topic and killing it. He is also proof positive that books should have editors. The rest of the problems with the story must be laid at the feet of the translator: Tracy Jay Skondin (only mentioned in the front matter. I assume from "Tracy Jay" that English is her first language, but you couldn't tell that from her translating work. There are more grammatical and spelling errors here than in a freshman history essay. And I know about that. My favorite misspelling is from page 216: "ostragon." I assumed that it was some crazy shape I didn't learn about in geometry class, but indeed it was an "ostracon." Hmm. Some sentences don't make sense, others are so butchered they could mean any number of things, sometimes contradictory things. Incredibly horrible. She should be dragged into the street and publicly beaten.

Another incredibly horrible decision was to place the notes in the margin. Normally I would applaud the attempt at scholarly precision and the attempt to stick things in the body text, but here again Nissen and his buddies fail horrendously. There is no style of citation that is followed. Some book titles are in quotes, others in italics, others in roman type. Some notes are located pages away from their cite. In the end, most of these notes aren't even helpful. This is proof positive that editors are needed for every book. Whoever decided that there shouldn't be an editor for this book should be dragged into the street and publicly beaten. Twice.

Then there are some of the conclusions here. The attempts at disproving Darwinian evolution and proving flood geology are amateurish and, unfortunately, laughable. Other books do this much better. Recourse to faulty pseudepigraphical books such as the Book of Jasher (one of them) isn't needed either. The attempt to undermine the "Ark on Ararat" folks is done poorly too. It is much better handled by Fasold in The Ark of Noah. Now to Fasold and Wyatt. David Fasold is quoted when his arguments are needed, but otherwise he is slandered at almost every turn. At one point he is disparaged as (p. 214): "probably not Christian." First, this is slander, and secondly, it should not matter. Nissen forgets that finding Noah's Ark proves Islam, Judaism, and every other mythology with a flood story as correct. The fact that he was a Christian doesn't seem to matter to Nissen - he must be disparaged because he fought with the Sainted Ron Wyatt. Wyatt was a huckster and fool of the greatest order. His shameless theories and discoveries of everything from the Ark of the Covenant to the wheels of Pharaoh's chariot to the true place of Calvary prove him to be an idiot. Yet his theories and "discoveries" are lauded at every turn. Metal rivets and nails and "rib timbers" that magically show up and magically disappear. Evidence and evidence and evidence that is not evidence. The chapters on Michelson and Deal (35-37) are interesting, though still poorly written. Their researches are where any future determinations about the Durupınar site lay.

Stick to websites and The Ark of Noah for information on the Durupınar site, don't shell out the 40+ bucks for this book, unless you're made of money.… (more)