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.
Many months later Wyatt suddenly turned up in my town, Redlands.
He phoned me and I invited him for an update chat. It was
then that he told me the story of his surreptitious exploration
of caves in the rear corner of the Garden Tomb, and of his penetration
to a point from which, with a flashlight, he could see the holy
furniture. He had kept this heart-stopping finding a secret for all
the intervening months until he could gather funding and
recruit some Christian colleagues to join him. They would
be the work force that would open up the cavern and bring to the
light of day the most extraordinary artifacts of all history.
Would I be willing to join the team?
What could I say to an invitation like this? Was this serious
archeology, or was it an Indiana Jones adventure? Was Wyatt's
story believable? Or was it pure fabrication, making him
a fraud? Here he was, looking fully into my face and telling me
concrete details of what he himself had done and seen some
18 months before. The man was a Christian, and his prayers
were as ardent and humble as you could ever hear. But
still I was deeply skeptical, and my family advised me to have
no part of it. On the other hand, the expedition was timed to
coincide with the Eastern Easter, the most colorful, exciting
time to visit Jerusalem. And I reasoned that if there was only
a 5% chance that Wyatt had actually seen something significant
in that cavern, then being present at its recovery was going to
be a memorable event, possibly life-changing, well worth the high
risk of probable failure. Even so, I made no move without
due diligence. I personally checked out Wyatt's reputation
in Tennessee where his church membership was located. I spoke
by phone with a senior S.D.A. church administrator for that
area, and he assured me that Wyatt was a member in good standing.
He regularly taught a Bible study class at his church, and did
it well. And though you could not be sure everything Wyatt
claimed was exactly as he said it, nevertheless you could know
that Wyatt himself believed in the facts as he presented
them..
Reassured, I flew to Jerusalem. Wyatt met me at Lod airport,
and drove me to join the rest of the team assembled at their
small hotel near the Damascus Gate. It was an interesting, heart-warming
group, professional men in various walks of life, all of them
serious students of the Bible, and devout in their Christian
faith. The next two weeks were exciting, and I can tell here
only the essentials. We first got written permission from the
Israeli authorities to pursue an exploration at the Garden Tomb.
Two of our team (I was one of them) accompanied Wyatt into
the office of Dan Bahat, the official in charge of archaeological
activities in Jerusalem. I listened to the conversations, and
could judge at once that the two men had met previously, and had
already discussed the proposed probe into caves in the Garden
Tomb. The permit was clearly legitimate; I watched
Bahat sign it.
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.
So there you have it. I am a long-time member of the S.D.A.
fraternity, and have a high regard for Scripture and for handling
its text in a responsible way. I am embarrassed that Wyatt, who
identified himself with my community of faith, should turn
out to be an unreliable witness to important archaeological
data. I cannot put any confidence in his opinions, his
assertions, or his declared eyewitness reports. Yet
the man I knew, now at rest, was truly a man of The
Word. He knew his Bible, and I heard him give impressive
expositions of some difficult passages. In full verbal flight
he could be eloquent. I expect his Bible study class was
a good one. Yet he was sadly flawed. From close personal
acquaintance, I cling to the belief that he was sincere,
at the same time as he was woefully mistaken. It was through
some quirk of mental dysfunction that he came himself to believe as
true certain facts and stories that were his own inventions.
I must add one further cautionary note. Wyatt was a persuasive
talker, and succeeded in firing the imaginations of many good
people in church pews. But I do not know of any S.D.A. scholar
who has given him serious favorable attention. He is an embarrassment
to them. I have had some correspondence with Jim
Pinkoski,* who was an ardent supporter. I have had no contact
with Jonathan Gray; my friends and colleagues in Australia describe
him as a publicity man, perhaps devoted as much to profit as
to truth. Wyatt's claims have been reviewed and critiqued exhaustively
by Drs.Colin and Russell Standish, who published a book on these
matters, and also by Dr. David Pennington. These critics
are in Australia; they all conclude that his claims and conclusions
are in serious error.
Now you can understand why I have laid aside the claims of
Ron Wyatt, and only speak my views when a respected colleague turns
up with a curious interest. I feel an obligation
to help people hear a balanced first-hand report. At the
same time I remain grateful to this extraordinary but flawed fellow-pilgrim
for opening for me a door into some memorable adventures.
* Correspondence:
Randall Price and Jim Pinkoski
--- Bernard Brandstater
--- bbrandstater@earthlink.net
Other Information and Links regarding Ron Wyatt
Posted January 25, 2002