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waters of the Dead Sea -- just to the east and south of Jerusalem. There are, of course, many other
areas in the world that would have collected water during the downpour. This brings up an inter-
esting question: "...if...Noah's flood did in fact submerge even the highest of the mountains, then
why was not the basin area containing the Dead Sea still brim full in the time of Abraham and even
today from those flood waters?" (Martin, p.24). The plain and simple truth is that the Dead Sea ba-
sin is not full of water (nor other large basin regions on earth) because the earth (planet) has
NEVER been submerged in water since the time of Adam!

It is almost shocking to turn back to the book of Genesis and discover that the Bible does
not say the ark rested on Mount Ararat at all! What Genesis actually says is this: "Then the ark
rested in the seventh month, the seventeenth day of the month, ON THE MOUNTAINS [PLURAL]
OF ARARAT" (Genesis 8:4). Explains Ralph Woodrow --

"Ararat" was the name of a COUNTRY. It was called the "KINGDOM OF ARARAT" (Jeremiah 51:27). The
word Ararat is but the Hebrew form of the Assyrian Urartu. In the late 7th century B.C., this general area
became known as Armenia. After King Sennacherib was assassinated by his two sons, they fled from
Nineveh to "Armenia" (2 Kings 19:37). The terms "ARARAT" and ARMENIA" are both translated from
the SAME Hebrew word in the Bible (Strong's Concordance, 780), Ararat simply being the older word by
which that country was known (Noah's Flood, Joshua's Long Day, and Lucifer's Fall, p. 67).

The expression "mountains of Ararat" in the book of Genesis indicates that during the
Flood the ark probably drifted from the region of Lake Van or from further south in the flat plains
of Mesopotamia into a mountainous region of the country of Ararat. But the Bible does not specify
exactly where or which mountain! Consequently, there is absolutely no reason at all to assume the
highest mountain in all of the land is intended. The oldest information available to us would place
the resting place of the ark further south in Ararat among mountains that were lower in elevation
and bordering the plain -- the Kurdistan mountains. The Expository Bible Encyclopedia informs
us that back in the 3rd. century B.C., the Babylonian Priest Berossus spoke of the ark coming to
rest on the southern frontier of Armenia (Ararat) in the Kurdistan mountains. Ephiphanius, in his
work Panarion I, simply stated the ark rested in "the country of the Kurds" (1:18). The Syriac Pe-
shitta (the Syriac version of the Bible composed by Rabbula, bishop of Edessa, in the 5th century
A.D.) and the Aramaic Targums (Aramaic paraphrases of the books of the Old Testament) of
Genesis 8:4 call these mountains where the ark came to rest the Kardo mountains -- as does the
Lamsa version of the Bible. The Kardo mountains are named from the Kurdish people who lived
amongst them. The Kurds originally lived south of Lake Van in the area that is now northern Iraq,
across a band of foothills and mountains that extended along the edge of the Mesopotamian plain.

The people living in northern Mesopotamia have long believed the ark came to rest in this
area. With the coming of Christianity this became the prevailing view of the Christian East -- in-
cluding the Nestorian Christians in northern Iraq and the Syrian church. Adds Woodrow:

Early in the 3rd century A.D., Hippolytus in Rome wrote that the ark came to rest "in the mountains called
Ararat, which are situated in the direction of the country of the Adiabeni. The Adiabeni lived in Adiabene,
the district between the two Zab Rivers, near the north end of the Zagros Mountains. Sextus Julius Africa-
nus, another noted name among church fathers, said that "we know" the mountains of Ararat on which the
ark landed are "in Parthia," which would point us, roughly, in the same direction (NF, JLD, & LF, p. 68).

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