Mountains of Ararat

{{About|the Scriptural reference|the peak identified with the Biblical account since the middle ages|Mount Ararat}}

File:Ararat Ms. 11639 521a.jpg landing on the "mountains of Ararat", from the North French Hebrew Miscellany (13th century)]]

In the Book of Genesis, the mountains of Ararat (Biblical Hebrew {{script/Hebrew|הָרֵי אֲרָרָט}}, Tiberian {{lang|he-Latn|hārê ’Ǎrārāṭ}}, Septuagint: {{lang|grc|τὰ ὄρη τὰ Ἀραράτ}}){{Cite book |url=https://my.bible.com/bible/59/GEN.8.ESV |title=BIBLE - GENESIS 8:4}} is the term used to designate the region in which Noah's Ark comes to rest after the Great Flood.{{cite web |title = Genesis 8:4 |url = http://biblehub.com/genesis/8-4.htm |website = Bible Hub |publisher = Online Parallel Bible Project |access-date = 8 June 2018 |ref = genesis84 }} It corresponds to the ancient Assyrian term Urartu, an exonym for the Armenian Kingdom of Van.Lang, David Marshall. Armenia: Cradle of Civilization. London: Allen and Unwin, 1970, p. 114. {{ISBN|0-04-956007-7}}.Redgate, Anna Elizabeth. The Armenians. Cornwall: Blackwell, 1998, pp. 16–19, 23, 25, 26 (map), 30–32, 38, 43. {{ISBN|0-631-22037-2}}.

Since the Middle Ages the "mountains of Ararat" began to be identified with a mountain in present Turkey known as Masis or Ağrı Dağı; the mountain became known as Mount Ararat.{{cite book |first = Alexander |last = Agadjanian |title = Armenian Christianity Today: Identity Politics and Popular Practice |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=YAYHDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA14 |date = 15 April 2016 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-17857-6 |page = 14 |quote = It is worth noting that, contrary to Armenian Apostolic Church discourse and popular knowledge, it was probably as late as the beginning of the second millennium AD when the localization of the biblical Mount Ararat was permanently moved from the highlands hemming upper Mesopotamia to Mount Masis in the heart of historical Armenian territory.}}{{cite book |last = Petrosyan |first = Hamlet |editor1-first = Levon |editor1-last = Abrahamian

|editor1-link = Levon Abrahamian

|editor2-first = Nancy |editor2-last = Sweezy |title = Armenian Folk Arts, Culture, and Identity |url = https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780253337047/page/36 |year = 2001 |publisher = Indiana University Press |isbn = 978-0-253-33704-7 |page =[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780253337047/page/36 36] |chapter = The Sacred Mountain |quote = When Armenians were first introduced to the biblical story of the flood, there was no special interest in the location of Mount Ararat. Most Armenian historians in the Early Middle Ages accepted the generally held Christian opinion of the time that Ararat was located near Mesopotamia in Korduk (Corduene), the southernmost province of Armenia. However, when European Crusaders on their way to free the Holy Land from Moslem rule appeared in the region in the 11th century, Armenian hopes for similar "salvation" helped to catalyze the final identification of Masis with Ararat. From the 12th century on, Catholic missionaries and other travelers to the region returned to Europe with the same story: that the mountain where the Ark landed was towering in the heart of Armenia.}} The Kurdish population is primarily concentrated on the Van plateau, from which numerous tribes radiate over a vast area, including territories extending toward Mount Ararat.{{Cite book |last=Reclus |first=Elisée |url=https://www.google.iq/books/edition/The_Earth_and_Its_Inhabitants/rIPTvgEACAAJ?hl=en |title=The Earth and Its Inhabitants: The Universal Geography |date=1876 |publisher=J.S. Virtue & Company, Limited |language=en}}

History

File:Martin Behaim's Erdpfel,1492 (Reproduction) Ararat in Armenia with Noah's Ark.jpg's Erdapfel (1492)]]

Citing historians Berossus, Hieronymus the Egyptian, Mnaseas, and Nicolaus of Damascus, Josephus writes in his Antiquities of the Jews that "[t]he ark rested on the top of a certain mountain in Armenia, ... over Minyas, called Baris".{{PACEJ|text=ants|bookno=1|chap=3|sec=5}}

Likewise, in the Latin Vulgate, Jerome translates Genesis 8:4 to read: "Requievitque arca ... super montes Armeniae" ("and the ark rested ... on the mountains of Armenia");{{cite web |title = The Book of Genesis: Chapter 8 |url = http://www.latinvulgate.com/verse.aspx?t=0&b=1&c=8#8_4 |website=LatinVulgate.com |publisher = Mental Systems, Inc. |access-date = 8 June 2018 |ref = latinvulgategen84 }} though in the Nova Vulgata as promulgated after the Second Vatican Council, the toponym is amended to "montes Ararat" ("mountains of Ararat").{{cite web |title = Liber Genesis |url = https://www.vatican.va/archive/bible/nova_vulgata/documents/nova-vulgata_vt_genesis_lt.html#8 |website=Nova Vulgata: Bibliorum Sacrorum Editio |publisher=The Holy See |access-date = 8 June 2018 |ref = novavulgatagen84 }}

File:Deluge masseot abaquesne faience ecouen.jpg art depicting the ark atop Ararat]]

By contrast, early Syrian and Eastern tradition placed the ark on Mount Judi in what is today Şırnak Province, Southeastern Anatolia Region,{{cite journal |last = Conybeare |first = Frederick Cornwallis |author-link = Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare |title = Reviewed Work: Ararat und Masis. Studien zur armenischen Altertumskunde und Litteratur by Friedrich Murad |journal=The American Journal of Theology |date=April 1901 |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=335–337 |doi=10.1086/477703 |jstor=3152410 |ref=conybeare1901 }} an association that had faded by the Middle Ages and is now mostly confined to Quranic tradition.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

The Book of Jubilees specifies that the ark came to rest on the peak of Lubar, a mountain of Ararat.{{cite web |title = The Book of Jubilees: Chapter 7 |url = http://www.pseudepigrapha.com/jubilees/7.htm |website = Pseudepigrapha, Apocrypha and Sacred Writings |access-date = 8 June 2018 |ref=jubilees }}

Sir Walter Raleigh devotes several chapters of his Historie of the World (1614) to an argument that in ancient times the mountains of Ararat were understood to include not only those of Armenia, but also all of the taller mountain-ranges extending into Asia. He maintains that since Armenia is not actually located east of Shinar,{{NoteTag|name=eastofshinar|See Genesis 11:2 in the King James Bible, following the Septuagint: "And it came to pass, as [the descendants of Noah] journeyed from the east (Septuagint: ἀπὸ ἀνατολῶν),{{cite web |title = Bereishit (Genesis) 11 :: Septuagint (LXX) |url = https://www.blueletterbible.org/lxx/gen/11/2/s_11002 |website = Blue Letter Bible |access-date = 20 June 2018 |ref=septuagintgen112 }} that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there." Ararat is in fact located to the northwest of Shinar; hence many translations depart from the Septuagint here, rendering the prepositional phrase as "eastward" or "to the east."{{cite web |title = Genesis 11:2 |url = http://biblehub.com/genesis/11-2.htm |website=Bible Hub |publisher=Online Parallel Bible Project |access-date=20 June 2018 |ref=kjvgen112 }} This discrepancy is discussed extensively in biblical commentaries{{cite web |title = Commentaries: Genesis 11:2 |url = http://biblehub.com/commentaries/genesis/11-2.htm |website=Bible Hub |publisher=Online Parallel Bible Project |access-date=20 June 2018 |ref=commentariesgen112 }}{{cite book |last = Kolatch |first = Yonatan |title = Masters of the Word: Traditional Jewish Bible Commentary from the First Through Tenth Centuries, Volume 1 |year=2006 |publisher=KTAV Publishing House, Inc. |location=Jersey City, New Jersey |isbn=0-88125-936-5 |page=214 |url = https://books.google.com/books?id=P9G4qAHWtVgC&q=%22east+of+shinar%22&pg=PA214 |access-date=20 June 2018 |ref=yonatan2006 }} and elsewhere.{{cite web |title = Noah's Ark: The Ark of Noah in Iran? |url = http://www.baseinstitute.org/pages/noahs_ark/17 |website = BASE Institute |publisher = The Bible Archaeology, Search & Exploration (BASE) Institute |access-date = 20 June 2018 |ref = basegen112 |archive-date = 20 June 2018 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180620101858/http://www.baseinstitute.org/pages/noahs_ark/17 |url-status = dead }}}} the ark must have landed somewhere in the Orient.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

Mountains of Ararat

History

See also

Notes

References

Further reading