Ron Wyatt
Ron Wyatt (1933 - 1999) was a pseudoarchaeologist famed for alleged discoveries of material evidence in support of some of the major events recorded in the Bible.
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His work was typically rejected by mainstream archaeology and Christians alike, the bulk of his support coming from the more extreme fringes of evangelical Christianity.
Wyatt's work is best characterized as being highly interpretive and suffering from a deficit of evidence. A schism developed after his death in which the ownership of his records fell in to dispute. This led to some of his records being difficult to locate.
Answers in Genesis (AIG) provides an appraisal of Wyatt's remarkable good fortune in discovering so many artifacts and sites of the bible:
“”Are the claims true? If they are, such a staggeringly impressive list would mean that Ron Wyatt had been almost as miraculously assisted by God as the patriarch Moses. If, however, a careful examination of just one or two of these claims reveals them to be false, fanciful or fraudulent, the ‘divine leading’ option evaporates, and it is clear that Christians are being seriously misled.[1] |
This may be one of those odd occasions in which AIG is correct, since the alternative is to accept that Wyatt, an amateur archaeologist, did the archaeological equivalent of developing General Relativity, Gravitational Theory, and after a break for lunch went on to develop the Theory of Evolution.
Wyatt's work is typically cited by fundamentalists as proof that events in the Bible actually occurred, but even this is only attempted by the terminally ignorant or stupid. When AIG shies away from something, it's a pretty good indicator that it's broken on through to the other side of crazy.
Background
Wyatt was working as a nurse-anesthetist when in 1960 he saw a photo of the Durupınar site, a mountainous region of Turkey, in which rock formations appear to resemble a the hull of a large boat. This inspired him to grab his hat and whip and seek glory and riches as an amateur archaeologist.
In later years he founded Wyatt Archaeological Research (WAR) and the Wyatt Archaeological Museum to support and publicize his work.[2]
"Discoveries"
Ron Wyatt was a textbook example of a pseudoarchaeologist, having presented fraudulent or amateurishly misinterpreted "evidence" on a number of occasions, notably the remains of Noah's Ark, the Ark of the Covenant and various nonsense regarding Moses and the Red Sea in Exodus.
Carrying on the torch
While Ron Wyatt died in 1999 and can thus no longer "enlighten" us with his "discoveries", his widow, Mary Nell Wyatt,[3] has continued to defend her late husband's legacy as well as adding some similar nuttery of her own.