Large numbers of sincere, truth-seeking believers have been impressed, even excited, by the reports of remarkable discoveries by Ron Wyatt in ancient Bible lands. Even some well-informed students of scripture have been persuaded that there is genuine merit in Mr. Wyatt's findings. On the other hand there are scholars who take the opposite view, and dismiss his views as unsupported by hard evidence, not deserving serious consideration.
I am reporting here my own personal experience with Mr.Wyatt, in the hope this will shed some light on his style and his trustworthiness as an observer. While my acquaintance with him led me to reject his archaeological findings, I persist in dealing gently with him as a well-intentioned person and as a Christian.
At the outset I should say that I knew Wyatt well, and had an up-close opportunity to evaluate his claims and his personal credibility. This happened in the late 1980's, when I joined Wyatt's digging team in East Jerusalem, expecting he would lead us to the underground cavern in which he had personally seen--so he had assured me--the gold-overlaid holy furniture from Solomon's Temple. It had been hidden there, he said, by the priests during the Babylonian siege in 586 BC. As he told it, it was a gripping story, and somewhat believable to someone with a romantic bent. It wasn't hard to imagine the senior Levites, foreseeing the imminent collapse of Jerusalem's defenses, plotting to hide the precious furnishings, during midnight darkness, in a secret cavern in the no-man's land outside the city walls.
Wyatt not only constructed this story: he claimed he had found the cavern. I had first met him, many months before, in the Hotel Ararat in Dogubeyazit, at the foot of Mount Ararat in Eastern Turkey. The hotel's humble foyer was buzzing with the comings and goings of men hunting for Noah's Ark. Amongst them all, Wyatt stood out, a tall impressive bearded figure, striding around with great self-assurance. He had in his hands a sheaf of large photographs showing his preferred site for the Ark, and he had the most persuasive story to back up his assertions. He had, I learned, a Seventh-day Adventist background, similar to my own, with a high view of scripture, so I felt inclined to listen respectfully to his story. Furthermore in real work-a-day life back home he was a nurse anesthetist, with interests similar to my own in anesthesiology. So we had some natural common ground. And at this first meeting I listened to his views, but kept an open mind.
....
Our team proceeded to the Garden Tomb, whose custodians were expecting our arrival. Wyatt had negotiated cordially and successfully with them. With an assortment of gardening tools we set to work, moving a large pile of rubble and rock which had accumulated where Wyatt had probed earlier. Over several days we were able to excavate our way down into the same cave system that Wyatt had explored two years before. I'm sorry to report that in the end we came up empty-handed. The connecting channel through which Wyatt had claimed to see the furniture was not there. On the final day of excavation, when we could not see the internal cavern landmarks that Wyatt had predicted, Ron himself finally climbed down into the dim space. After a long time he emerged, looking confused. As we waited respectfully to hear his report, he mumbled a few words like: "It's not the same; it's changed. It's not the way I remember it." There was no opening to be seen, giving a view into an adjacent cavern. There was nothing. In the process of our digging we had come up with a few interesting little objects from Roman times, but they were irrelevant to our main goal.
Our team was disappointed, puzzled, disillusioned. We had enjoyed ten days of close fellowship, with daily shared prayer times, and an excited anticipation of momentous events just before us. Now all those hopes came crashing down. And sadly, Wyatt was not man enough to come clean, to apologize for bringing us on a wild goose chase, or to attempt any kind of explanation. We kept expecting some sort of statement, but he just remained silent, withdrawn. And we were too stunned, and perhaps too sorry for him in his confusion, to demand that he explain.
To this day I cannot give a rational account for the extreme misguidedness that Wyatt revealed. What was happening in his head? His participation in our group worship times had left all of us in no doubt about his sincerity and his devotion to Scripture. He was a competent Bible scholar. He was a brother. Yet he had misled us terribly, and had offered no words of regret or apology or explanation. I have reviewed the whole story many times since then, and am convinced that the church administrator was right: Wyatt might be mistaken, but he himself believed that what he had originally shared was true.
From medical school I remember hearing of a rare state of mind, with a long Latin name, that led its victims to concoct marvelously detailed accounts of events that were pure fabrications, yet which the story-teller himself had come to believe were absolutely true. I am inclined to believe that Wyatt was a florid example of this disorder. He was not a deliberate liar, a fraud. And some of his observations had merit. But I am convinced that some of his "discoveries" were matters which underwent transcription in his mind, and he came to believe as true certain ideas and observations that in fact were his own inventions.
This opinion became confirmed in my mind some time after the Jerusalem expedition. Wyatt was trying to convince everyone of the validity of his site for Noah's Ark. And in trying to convince me, he described some extraordinary details of the rock-and-earth formation that he believed gives us an outline of the Ark. He told me of probing with a tool into the earthen mound, and breaking into a cavity in which he could see--actually see--the remains of corroded metal "brackets" that he presumed were part of the Ark's construction. This description caught my attention--all of it. If Wyatt's report was factual, then we should get serious about his site for the Ark. But was Wyatt a trustworthy observer and reporter? Months later I followed up on this story, referring to my long-time friend John Baumgardner, who had personally visited Wyatt's Ark site, and had subjected the whole area to minute scrutiny, including a survey with penetrating radar. When I described to John the eyewitness report of Wyatt, he simply laughed and dismissed the whole thing. He assured me, beyond any doubt, that the Ark site under study revealed no cavitation as described by Wyatt, and that the description given to me was entirely a fabrication.
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