Noah's ark found ?!?

Paleobabble has been forwarded an email apparently originating with ark-hunter Randall Price.According to the email Price reports that the original photos were of a structure near the Black Sea, which was later moved - at least in part - to Ararat. Price and his associates have apparently lost $100,000 over this.

It's not very clear, is it ? I read it as suggesting that the Chinese were behind it, rather than dupes. but there's nothing explicit.

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There are many many differences however between a classic such as the Iliad and the Bible. The Bible was written by 40 authors over a span of thousands of years. If you really get down and study the historicity of the Bible and archeology, it's fascinating and nothing shy of miraculous the amount of evidence that verifies the history of the Bible.

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I suspect you've been misled by the apologists.

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The Iliad was written around 800 B.C. and the earliest copy that has been found was dated around 400 B.C, thus a 400 year time gap. 643 copies have been found of the Iliad. Contrast that with the NT where the earliest copies found were around 70-100 AD (some say 50 AD but I'll error in caution) with time gaps of only 50-225 years with 5366 copies/fragments having been found. The NT will stand up historically with any classic written such as Herodotus' "History", Caesar's "Gallic Wars" and Tacitus' "Annals".

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Now, this is an example of what I mean. I note that you don't even mention the time gap between the supposed writing date of OT books and the earliest manuscripts. The apologists are already cherry-picking (especially as they want to pretend that some OT books are hundreds of years older than the evidence suggests). There are no NT manuscripts from the 1st century, at all. The earliest is the John Rylands papyrus from 130 AD - and that is a tiny fragment. You have to go a lot later before you can find a complete book. And the gap between the date of writing and the copies we have is not even an especially important criterion ! It helps assure us that the text has not changed, but it tells us nothing about the reliability of the original text. Again, this is cherry-picking. The Bible does well on this criterion - although not well enough for them as we can see by their exaggeration - so they exaggerate the importance of it.Apologetics is supposed to be a defence of Christianity. Too often it is an indictment.

The same way that he thinks that the Ark is more likely to be a natural rock formation - as even YECs who have examines the site say - rather than an actual wooden structure dated to be the right age ?

The story is that many of the photos were taken at the original Black Sea site, and that the timbers were then transported up the mountain to be "discovered" later. If it is true that cobwebs don't belong in a glacial site (and it seems plausible to me) then the existence of the cobwebs is consistent with the fraud story - and inconsistent with the Chinese claims.