Response to TIME’s article. . .
Francis Danby, 1793–1861
The Deluge, Tate Gallery
Mount Ararat
(Montage by Gene Fackler)
The following is our research staff’s response to the article in the July 5th issue of Time magazine, and to a similar story released by Associated Press on June 29th. Both articles asserted that George Jammal, one of our 50 expert interviewees used in The Incredible Discovery of Noah’s Ark, fabricated his eye-witness account of seeing Noah’s ark on Mt Ararat.
In examining the controversy generated by these articles, four issues must be addressed. First, who is making the claim that Mr. Jammal fabricated his Noah’s Ark account? Second, did Sun perform due diligence in its research to determine whether Mr. Jammal’s account was reliable? Third, was the alleged Ark wood shown at the end of Mr. Jammal’s interview authentic or a piece of doctored California pine? And fourth, is Mr. Jammal’s expedition account of seeing the Ark still factual?
WHO IS MAKING THE CLAIM THAT MR. JAMMAL FABRICATED HIS NOAH’S ARK ACCOUNT?
Dr. Gerald LaRue, professor emeritus of biblical history and archaeology at the University of Southern California says in Time that he “coached George Jammal, an acquaintance, to perpetrate the hoax, intended to expose the shoddy research of Sun International.”
It seems from this statement that Dr. LaRue is probably conducting some type of a vindictive campaign against Sun. This may be the result of his appearance as a skeptic in our show, “Ancient Secrets of the Bible I” which aired on May 15, 1992. According to Time magazine, Dr. LaRue felt he was “set up as a straw man.”
Dr. LaRue, despite having taught both biblical history and biblical studies at USC, is a very outspoken individual on a number of controversial issues, including being a frequent Bible critic. In our show, he was a critic of the Walls of Jericho falling down. As our TV special is a critic-proponent show, he was followed by two proponents of the biblical story – Dr. Amos Nur, chairman of the
BSP 6:3 (Summer 1993) p. 81
Geophysics Department at Stanford University, and Dr. Bryant Wood, a Syro-Palestinian archaeologist who has written extensively on Jericho for the professional peer journal Biblical Archaeology Review. They refuted LaRue’s argument based on their own extensive scientific studies.
Since 1982, Dr. LaRue has served as chairman of the Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion, a group dedicated to refuting Bible claims; was the consulting editor (1987–1989) and Emeritus President of the National Hemlock Society, a euthanasia advocacy organization; and is the senior editor of Free Inquiry, a humanist magazine published by the U.S. Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism, another group with goals of removing religion from society and Bible oriented programs from public broadcast. The Time article in an attempt to make it appear that all archaeologists were disturbed over the Noah TV show cites an archaeologist writing in Free Inquiry — the very publication in which Dr. LaRue serves as the senior editor!
DID SUN PERFORM DUE DILIGENCE IN ITS RESEARCH TO DETERMINE WHETHER MR. JAMMAL’S ACCOUNT WAS RELIABLE?
One news interviewer went so far as to say we pulled Mr. Jammal off the street swallowing his tale without investigating the account for reliability. This is certainly not true as we investigated all of our Noah’s Ark eyewitness accounts with due diligence before using them in the show. This is the investigative procedure followed in the Jammal eyewitness account:
1. We examined his first and only known interview account given on June 10, 1986, to geologist and Ararat explorer Dr. John Morris. We then made our own extensive search to locate Mr. Jammal for a research interview.
Contrary to what Dr. LaRue seems to claim in the Time article and the Associated Press release that he master-mined the hoax in 1992, this 1986 interview
BSP 6:3 (Summer 1993) p. 82
discredits his argument and further establishes that Sun did not pull Mr. Jammal off the street in 1992–93 and concoct his story for TV.
2. After locating Mr. Jammal in Long Beach, California, we conducted our own two-hour, audio taped, interrogative interview. We asked him a wide range of questions looking for flaws and inconsistencies in his account.
3. We compared Mr. Jammal’s 1986 and 1992 interviews and found excellent consistency between the two accounts, although the interviews were given six years apart.
4. We then gave Mr. Jammal’s interview tapes to Dr. Paul Meier, a well-known California psychiatrist, co-founder of the 28 Minirth-Meier clinics across America, and author of 40 books on human behavior. Dr. Meier, who also served as the field physician on Astronaut James Irwin’s Noah’s Ark expedition to Mr. Ararat, was asked to provide a psychiatric and content analysis of Mr. Jammal’s account.
Here are Dr. Meier’s comments from a July 10, 1992 letter addressed to Sun’s Chief Researcher, David W Balsiger:
“I have listened to the tapes you sent of the interviews you did with Ed (Davis) and George (Jammal). I find both of their accounts totally believable; and having been there myself, I know that their descriptions of the customs of the people and of the precise locations are all extremely accurate.”
“Ed and George definitely have different personality types and yet are very credible. Given George’s personality type, I find it logical that he would keep his discovery of Noah’s Ark a secret after the death of his guide and after his disillusionment with God for allowing that to happen. His personality type would also typically keep something like that a secret until he could be the “star” to announce the discovery of the Ark himself, rather than to pass on the information to others and allow them to go up and get the credit.”
13th Century Hebrew Bible and Prayerbook. British Library
Dr. Meier also gave us the following on-camera interview regarding Mr. Jammal’s account which ended up not being used due to showtime restraints:
“I found George Jammal to be the most interesting of the accounts. In psychiatric terms, we would call him an ‘obsessive-compulsive with histrionic features.’
“What that really means is that he’s a perfectionistic performer. He is the personality type that you’d find in a lot of Hollywood characters or people in the limelight a lot. He has a ‘can do’ naivete’ about himself.”
“For example, he wanted to be a star, so he moved to Hollywood, assuming that he would become a star. He wanted to find Noah’s Ark, so he climbed to Mt. Ararat, without knowing hardly anything about mountain climbing when he went there. He has that ‘can do’ type of mentality.”
“At the same time, I found him to be extremely conscientious and very perfectionistic. If you asked him a question, he would want to make sure you knew every detail so he would go on and on describing every detail of things that weren’t even closely related to the things you were asking.
BSP 6:3 (Summer 1993) p. 83
“He speaks five languages and he’s a very intelligent Palestinian. He’s a determined dreamer. He wants fame and yet he’s humble enough to admit it. A lot of people want fame, but they won’t admit it. They act humble, but they’re not. He was truly humble.
“He wanted to feel special. I get the feeling that when he was growing up he didn’t get as much attention as he wanted from his father. That’s just a guess because I don’t know him personally; I’ve only studied him from his tapes.
“So, he craves attention and when he and his friend Vladimir found the Ark, they were absolutely delighted. They felt special — special to God. George’s childhood dream of being acceptable and deserving his father’s attention was fulfilled because God chose him to find the Ark.
“They were delighted and they took pictures of each other. George took pictures of his friend Vladimir and then Vladimir took both cameras and moved back as far away from the Ark as he could to get a full view of the landscape so that if there was an avalanche, they could still find it and get back to the Ark.
“They make plans to secretly go down the mountain and not tell anyone until they got a film crew because they wanted credit for finding it — which you and I would do too. Let’s be honest! But, while Vladimir was taking a picture after backing up, he slipped and there was a rock slide and I know this is accurate. George wept while he was talking about it — and this was eight years later. Losing his friend Vladimir was devastating for him.
“Vladimir was crushed by a rock slide and fell into a crevasse and George was able to avoid (falling in) even though he was hit by some of the rocks. He lost his friend. I believe that on an unconscious level, George then, decided, ‘I was right the first time. I don’t deserve my father’s attention. I don’t deserve to be a chosen one. Why me? Why did God choose me to find the Ark? Maybe God doesn’t want me to tell anyone it’s here.’
Third Century Catacomb Fresco Wall Painting
“He became bitter and depressed. He developed anxiety and withdrew into himself for years. Then, he went to a debate a number of years later where he saw people arguing about whether or not the Bible was true and he thought: ‘This is bigger than me. I need to get out and let people know that I saw the Ark and not just be withdrawn into myself any longer.’
“I find this to be extremely credible. He felt ecstatic, special and overwhelmed with joy and found the Ark. Then, when Vladimir died, he felt depressed for years afterwards.
“Professionally, the impact of Vladimir’s death on George Jammal fits a posttraumatic stress disorder and with therapy, he could work his way out of this. But he still has a lot of buried emotions which showed in his weeping during the interview and his very honest grief over the loss of his friend.
“Some of his descriptions were especially remarkable. His description of the Ark fits exactly what I know to be true about the Ark from the secret government reconnaissance photos.
“I found Jammal’s account to be very detailed, very accurate and very humble.
BSP 6:3 (Summer 1993) p. 84
He was vulnerable. He was honest and said he wanted the fame and yet he feels like he’s wasted his life searching for fame.”
“I just find his story extremely credible and of the four accounts I analyzed. I believe his to be the most credible. His descriptions of the customs of the people, of the Ark itself and its location, are very accurate. These are things he could not have known from outside sources. He had no access to the reconnaissance photos and prior to that year, this information was not well-known. So, I totally believe George Jammal’s account.”
5. We also had Mr. Jammal’s hand drawn map of his three Ararat expedition routes studied by Ararat and Ark expeditioneers and climbers. They confirmed the accuracy of it, and assured us that it could not have been drawn by anyone who did not have experience with the mountain.
Regarding Mr. Jammal’s account of his eyewitness encounter with Noah’s Ark, we as a production company did far more investigative research than normally undertaken by “reality shows” or most news shows. Based on the outcome of our investigative research on Jammal’s account, we included it in the show. For the record, we also did the same type of background research on the other eyewitness accounts before including them in the TV show.
WAS THE ALLEGED ARK WOOD SHOWN AT THE END OF MR. JAMMAL’S INTERVIEW AUTHENTIC OR A PIECE OF DOCTORED CALIFORNIA PINE?
Frankly, we do not know the answer to this question as Mr. Jammal’s show segment dealt with his visit to the Ark and not whether the wood was authentic.
It has not been the practice of Sun or other production companies to spend money or time testing and documenting artifacts shown on the air by interviewees. If Sun undertook to test every artifact shown by our various experts we should be out of the entertainment business and stepping into the news side of TV broadcasting. This was not the direction or directive for this television network special.
Dr. LaRue somehow believes it should have been our obligation to run carbon-14 tests on the wood apparently expecting us to “create news” instead of entertaining viewers by telling them what people have to say about this ancient mystery. Besides the carbon-14 test would not necessarily have proven that the wood was a forgery or anything else as the sample according to the Time article was contaminated by baking and juices. This would have prevented obtaining accurate carbon-14 dating results.
IS MR. JAMMAL’S EXPEDITION ACCOUNT OF SEEING THE ARK STILL FACTUAL?
We still stand by Mr. Jammal’s expedition account as being accurate based on the due diligence research we have conducted.
BSP 6:3 (Summer 1993) p. 85
Our position is not expected to change unless there is an admission by Mr. Jammal of an elaborate hoax, and how he managed to execute such a clever hoax to convince a professional psychiatrist and several experienced Ark-Ararat explorers that he was telling the truth.. .or until third party collaborating evidence can substantiate Dr. LaRue’s account of the hoax.
It is significant to note that on February 28th, eight days after the airing of the Noah Ark Special, Chief Researcher David Balsiger received a letter from Mr. Jammal in which he stated:
“Some skeptics claim I was lying. To fight back, I told them I am willing to take a lying test (Lie detector) with Larry Williams who tested Ed Davis. Yes, Dave, I want to be tested, too, to prove to them the real truth.”
It is important to point out that Time magazine and the Associated Press did in fact have copies of all relevant documents and files mentioned in this letter. Yet, they chose to write one-sided hit pieces without mentioning or quoting from documents in their possession.
Whether it is ever proven that a complete, partial or no hoax was committed by Mr. Jammal, it’s sad and unfortunate that Dr. LaRue, a distinguished USC professor, would victimize Mr. Jammal and his family to execute a third party hoax in which he was the primary benefactor — the person who says he coached Mr. Jammal into lying on television, and then exposed him claiming credit for exposing his own hoax!
We also take objection to the characterization by the news media that our entire Noah’s Ark TV Special was a hoax. Mr. Jammal was only one of 50 experts that provided authoritative interviews on a wide range of subjects relating to the Noah’s Ark mystery. Additionally, the TV Special told the Noah’s Ark story as recorded in the Bible along with the presentation of historical data, scientific experiments, and Ararat accounts.
Furthermore, Mr. Jammal was only one of four filmed eyewitnesses who claimed to have had on-the-ground encounters with the Ark. Similar due diligent research was done on these other three Ark eyewitness accounts before including them in the show. No one has come forward with evidence that any of these remaining eyewitness accounts are perpetrated hoaxes on Sun International. We also stated at the end of the eyewitness accounts that it was up to the audience to decide whether their accounts were believable or not!
Mr. Jammal