Ron Wyatt: Father of Bad Archaeology
Hey, I'm not looking to bring anybody down, OK? That's not what this blog(to use the vernacular of the young people) is all about; and that's why I'm not even going to mention my theory that the writing staff of Dexter went on strike months ago and the cast is pretty much making up the show as they go along. That said, there's something I need to tell you about the Ark of the Covenant: It's gone.
I don't mean "gone" as in "lost" as in "Raiders of the..." gone; I mean "gone" as in melted down by King Nebuchadnezzar after his troops sacked the Temple in 586 BCE gone. No, it's not in a secret Government warehouse; neither is it sitting in a shed behind a church in Ethiopia (That’s a Medieval forgery). Eric H. Cline thinks it's gone and that's good enough for me.
Of course that doesn't mean that there aren't plenty amateur archaeologists/comedians searching for the Ark of the Covenant. As fascinating/hilarious as these expeditions might be, few can ever hope to reach the comedic triumph achieved by Ron Wyatt: the man who found – and then lost - the Ark of the Covenant.
The late Ron Wyatt is probably the Greatest Bad Archaeologist of all time. Seriously, at this moment there are guys digging for Thor's hammer in the backyards of their suburban Chicago homes who can never hope to hold a candle to chock-full-o'-nuttiness achieved by Wyatt who claimed to have discovered the remains of Noah's Ark, the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah, the exact spot where Jesus was crucified, Stevie Wonder's car keys, and, of course, the Ark of the Covenant. True, Ron’s method for locating the Ark of the Covenant was a little unorthodox. It seems that one day, in 1978, while walking along an ancient stone quarry in Jerusalem, Ron suddenly pointed to a trash dump and said “That’s Jeremiah’s Grotto and the Ark of the Covenant is in there."
It’s odd that the folks at the Wyatt Archaeological Research Web Site failed to mention that tidbit here. Anyway, the story gets even better.
Three and a half years of digging later, Ron struck gold, or to be more precise The Ark of the Covenant...
"On the back of the Ark is a small open cubicle which still contains the 'Book of the Law'"- Ron Wyatt
Yes, THE Book of the Law. The one Moses wrote.
But wait, there’s more...
In the same cave along with the Ark of the Covenant, Ron also found the Table of Shewbread, and the Golden Alter of Incense, and the Seven-Branched Candelabra, and a few other assorted ancient side-splitting treasures.
Now, if you're like me - and theses days, who isn't? - I bet you're just itchin' (it's more like a painful rash, really) to have a gander at the wonders Ron unearthed. Well, there's a small problem. You see, after exiting the cave and failing to remove any of the objects as proof (maybe Ron was just too good of an Archaeologist to disturb the scene), Ron was never again to find the cave.
Hey! It's not polite to laugh at smegtards, so cut it out.
By the way, last time I forgot to mention just how impressed I was with the way the folks at answers in genesis claimed that the Biblical account of Noah was, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, older than the Epic of Gilgamesh: because, since Noah and his family had been the only survivors of the Great Flood, they obviously wrote their story down and the Pagans later changed it. You can't argue with that kind of logic. Ron Wyatt would be proud.