SEEKER OF THE
LOST ARK?
Miriam Rozen
VENDYL
JONES EXPOSED!
Published by Dallas Observer [dallasobserver.com ], 2000-09-28
Vendyl Jones says he's a crusading archaeologist searching for long-lost
biblical treasures. His critics say he's more worried about self-promotion than
science. By Miriam Rozen
Vendyl
Jones certainly looks like an archaeologist, or at least like an aging,
Hollywood back-lot version of one, as the tall Texan stomps about the desert
near Jordan dressed in leather boots and hat, a tan shirt and tan slacks held
up by snakeskin suspenders.
Balding and bearded, Jones
puffs on a calabash pipe as he describes for documentary filmmakers his quest
for the legendary lost Ark of the Covenant. In a West Texas drawl, he lingers
on Hebrew words and biblical references as he speaks of the gilded wooden box
that some religious scholars believe houses the stone tablets (Jones contends
they were actually sapphire prisms) that Moses brought from Mount Sinai.
According to some believers, finding the Ark will mean the arrival--or
return--of the messiah, world peace, or the beginning of the end.
With
the possible exception of Harrison Ford, Hollywood probably could not have cast
a better person to play the role of an archaeologist-cum-adventurer than this
70-year-old former preacher from Grand Prairie. Jones' story is fit for an
old-time movie serial. Unfortunately for him and his
supporters, to some legitimate archaeologists it's also just about as
plausible.
For
the documentary-makers in Europe and Israel who have turned Jones into a minor
celebrity, Jones' appeal is neither science nor religion; it's his claim that he was the role model for the
swashbuckling hero of director Steven Spielberg's Indiana Jones and the Raiders
of the Lost Ark. Jones rarely misses an opportunity to
mention the connection to reporters. "Take
the first and last letter of my first name," Jones says, "and you get
'Endy Jones.'"
Spielberg denies Jones' claim, but that
didn't matter last year when Jones went with a Spanish television crew to
Petra, Jordan. Jones has never stuck a shovel or scraped a trowel near the
city, but part of the last Raiders sequel, 1989's Indiana
Jones and The Last Crusade, was shot nearby. Jones says he was embarrassed
by the slim,
unscholarly premise for his
appearance but decided to be a good sport for the cameras. "I leaned back
and pulled a hat over my eyes," Jones recalls. After shooting some
footage, the crew wanted to introduce him to the local mayor. 
Jones says the mayor
approached him and practically spit on the ground in disgust. "That man is
not Indiana Jones," Jones recalls the dignitary's saying. "He is just
acting like Indiana Jones." After much explaining, the Spanish crew
finally persuaded the mayor that Jones was the authentic article and Harrison
Ford, whom the mayor had met, was the actor.
But
just how authentic is Jones? From Jerusalem to Grand Prairie, from baptism to
his own brand of non-Jewish adherence to the Torah, Jones lives a life that
is alluring to romantics and anathema to skeptics.
Jones
believes he has a key to solving the Middle East crisis through archaeology,
and he has persuaded contributors to provide him money and sweat to dig for it,
but he has not been so lucky in enticing Israeli government officials or
academics to buy into his quest. Jones believes the Israeli government fears
his work because he is about to find biblical treasures supporting Jewish
territorial claims, and that will upset the Middle East peace process.
Israeli authorities say professional rather than political concerns
make them unhappy about Jones and reluctant to give him permits to dig.
"I
don't want to talk about him," says Itzhak Magen, the director of
antiquities in Judea and Samaria for the Israeli government, who has apparently grown tired of the attention given a man he
considers without credibility. "It's not for political
reasons that we don't give him permits. It's for science reasons."
Acclaimed
archaeologists also distrust Jones' work. "It's
a shame to mislead the public. What a tragic waste of money," says Robert
Elliot Friedman, a professor of archaeology at the University of California in
San Diego and the author of the bestseller Who Wrote the Bible? about
the historical period from which Jones hopes to find his treasures. Jones, Friedman says, exaggerates
his findings. For example, Jones claims he has found items from
Solomon's Temple without enough evidence to corroborate
him.
But
for Jones' followers--and he has enough to support a mansion in Grand
Prairie, a second house in Israel, and hundreds of thousands of
dollars invested in digs [NOTE: From donors,
not legitimate university grants]--the man is pursuing a purpose
holier than simple academia. "I think he is doing God's work," says
Janet Lewis, a 64-year-old resident of Seven Points, Texas. She drives 85 miles
on Sundays to attend Jones' classes on the Torah, saves money to give to him,
and works in his office as a volunteer. "He will find the ashes of the red
heifer and then the Ark, and the world will change," she says simply.
"I
have always believed and stated that our work is a work of destiny," Jones
wrote in a recent letter he dispatched to some 8,000
people on his mailing list to raise money for future excavations,
In
three decades of digging in caves in Qumran, a region near the border of
Israel and Jordan, Jones has made several discoveries--some of them dubious--that
he [attempts to] links to the temple built by King Solomon, where the Ark was
once supposedly kept. Before invading Babylonians destroyed the temple located
in what is now Jerusalem, Jones and others believe religious leaders secreted
away the Ark and other artifacts. Jones, relying on his interpretation of
historical, but controversial documents, thinks the objects were hidden in the
caves in Qumran.
In
1988, Jones announced he had found a jug of anointing oil in the caves that
dated to the time of the temple. The find brought him front-page coverage in The
New York Times. In 1992, he held a news conference to declare that he had
found a reddish-brown powder deep in a man-made chamber of a cave. Citing
chemical research, he claimed the powder was ritual incense used by Jewish
priests.
Jones
contends the discovery of the Ark might
only be a dig away--except that the Israeli
government won't give him a permit.
If
Jones is right, the Israeli government has good cause to be concerned about his
search. Locating remnants of Solomon's Temple could inflame the territorial
battles burning in the Middle East. The probable site of Solomon's Temple in
Jerusalem is now occupied by the third-holiest Muslim shrine in the world, the
Dome of the Rock. Faithful Muslims believe the gold-topped mosque is where
Muhammad ascended into heaven. Efforts like Jones' only encourage messianic-minded
fundamentalists, both Jewish and Christian, into hatching schemes to gain
control of the temple's former location.
With
the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks teetering, Jones believes his search has
become even more important. He wants to prove the Jews' God-given rights to the
land before the Israeli government makes concessions.
"What
I am doing has real political ramifications," Jones says. "If I find
the Ark, it is going to have a hellacious impact." He hesitates for moment
and then adds, "Of course, most people think I have a one in 100,000
chance of succeeding."
"Thank
God for this," Jones prays as he glances around his high-ceilinged
living room, large enough to serve as a high-school auditorium. Jones' colonial-style
mansion, into which he moved this year, sits in one of those neighborhoods that
makes one marvel at what Texas real estate developers will plop on a prairie.
On a badly paved road near where Arlington meets Grand Prairie and where crowds
flock to the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum, sits Jones' house, behind
its ostentatious façade of six columns. Jones also owns a three-room
apartment in an Orthodox Jewish settlement in Israel, where he lives during his
excavations. He says he is the only non-Jew in the community.
In
the last 20 years, Jones has, through his writings, talks, and conferences
revitalized the Ben Noahide (Hebrew for sons of Noah) movement. With an
estimated 500 families in the United States and scattered pockets of adherents
worldwide, the Noahides, as they call themselves, follow a religious path they
believe non-Jews traveled almost 2,000 years ago. That's when some non-Jews
still studied the Torah and believed they had to follow universal laws given by
God to prophet Noah, Jones explains. According to the Noahides'
interpretation of the Torah and rabbinical teachings, the "seven laws
of Noah" prohibit idolatry, blasphemy, bloodshed, sexual sins, theft, and
the eating of flesh from a living animal. A final law encourages support of a
legal system.
Jones
meets almost every Sunday afternoon with his followers in his Grand Prairie
home. At a recent gathering, about 15 mostly middle-aged or older people
sat in chairs scattered around his capacious living room. Almost all had Bibles
open, either in their laps or on tray tables. Janet Lewis and more than a dozen
other participants dissected a portion of the Old Testament that, according to
Jewish law and calendar, was read to Jewish congregations around the world that
week. In speaking to each other, the Ben Noahides refer often to Hashem, the
deferential Hebrew moniker for a deity that they respectfully do not name.
On
the walls of Jones' living room are homemade posters blessing the Torah and the
Jewish people for teaching the book. Menorahs and reliefs of Jews praying at
the Western Wall in Jerusalem decorate the shelves.
Several
times
in the past decade, Jones has helped arrange conventions of Noahides and
invited rabbinical scholars to teach the Torah. At first, the rabbis were
skeptical, but some have embraced the movement, particularly more Orthodox and
politically conservative leaders such as Rabbi Michael Katz in Florida.
"These people are really impressive. They are trying to learn," says Michael Dallen, a close ally of Katz,
an Orthodox Jew, and an author of a book about Noah's teachings.
"I'll
get the people, you get the teachers," Jones recalls he told the chief
rabbi in Israel
before arranging a Ben Noahide convention in Fort Worth in 1990 attended by 350
families.
On
a typical Sunday in his home, the crowd is much thinner. "We
don't do any advertising. People come when they want," Jones says.
"I could have built a religious empire if I wanted, but I
didn't." In front of a reporter, he told his congregation: "I am not
a prophet. This is a non-prophet organization."
Typically,
those interested in the Noahide movement are former fundamentalist Christians.
They are often professionals with some
disposable income, some time, and some interest in pursuing a richer spiritual
life.
"It's
hard when you always wanted to be a Christian and then you change your faith,"
says Lewis, who heard about Jones through a friend and then a newspaper article
before she began attending his classes 13 years ago.
Jones
also believed in Christianity in his youth. Born in Sudan, a town of 1,000
people northwest of Lubbock, Jones was reared as a fundamentalist by his
parents, who owned and operated a barbershop and beauty parlor. Jones
laughs--as he often does when he talks about himself--as he recalls the story
of how his mother read the Bible to him. She started by rolling a newspaper as
if it were a megaphone, directing it to her womb and reciting the Book of
Genesis to him in her first trimester. By the time he was 9, he says, he had
read about one-third of the Bible.
High
school photographs of Jones show an odd bespectacled boy. At age 17, he says,
he underwent an experience that forever committed him to God's work. An
experiment in chemistry class backfired, and the explosion put him on the
floor. For a moment, he thought he was blinded. "God give me back my
sight, and I'll do anything you want," he remembers saying. As it
happened, the soot was easily wiped from his glasses, but he kept the
promise nonetheless.
In
the mid-'50s, Jones studied to become a preacher at
Bible Baptist Seminary, a now-defunct school in Dallas, then served
for about a year at a congregation in Virginia and later in North Carolina.
Even in seminary, Jones says he had his doubts about his religion.
"I
was in the assembly for three weeks," Jones recalls. "This guy
brought this lecture on the Holy Trinity. I asked if they had seen the [term]
'Holy Trinity' in the Bible...and the dean called me to his office the next
morning."
Most
Baptists, Jones says, "are so narrow-minded they could piss through a
keyhole," but his dean was tolerant and admiringly asked his student how
he got so many of his classmates to comb through and carefully review their
Bibles. (The story is typical of Jones, who has a way of talking about himself
that is at once self-denigrating and boastful.)
By
the early '60s, Jones was still Christian
but had begun studying the Torah and other Jewish writings. In 1967, he moved
his family of five to Israel so he could study at Hebrew University. A
steadfast supporter of the state of Israel, Jones volunteered to help the
Israeli Army during the 1967 Six-Day War. Colorblind, Jones says he served as a
forward spotter because he was able to detect certain camouflages better than
others. The fighting ended quickly with an Israeli victory and a modicum amount
of fame for Jones, whose story appeared in Time magazine. "No
Americans were known to have joined the fighting--or were needed--but at least
one, the Rev. Vendyl Jones of Sudan, Texas, lent civilian support," Time
correspondents wrote in a breathless June 1967 account. "Wandering near
the Jordan border from a kibbutz where he had been working, the Baptist
minister started talking to the Israeli command, who soon discovered that the
Rev. Mr. Jones possessed a rare skill..."
It
was the first score in Jones' lifelong knack for garnering superlative--and
unquestioning--media accounts of his achievements.
Jones'
interest in archaeology dated to his teens, when he and friends excavated
Indian artifacts in West Texas. In Israel, Jones, who says he studied with an
archaeologist at Bob Jones University in South Carolina, merged his biblical
studies with his digging.
To
map his excavations over the years, Jones has relied on biblical references and
clues from one of the Dead Sea Scrolls, manuscripts that were produced roughly
19 centuries ago but are not fully understood by today's scholars. Believed to
have been written by an enigmatic sect of Jewish mystics who, some contend,
created Christianity, the scrolls were unearthed in 1947 by a bedouin shepherd
in Qumran.
Initially
shrouded in secrecy, the scrolls and their academic interpreters have been at
the center of numerous controversies in the Middle East. Ever since the scrolls
were found shortly before the United Nations established Israel, the ancient
texts have fueled religious and conspiracy theorists. John Allegro, one of the
original members of a team of scholars tagged to dissect the tattered
manuscripts, ruined his academic reputation when he insisted that the scrolls
proved Jesus was just a cheap sequel to the real Righteous Teacher described in
the old texts. Another Oxford-trained scholar also lost much standing when he
advanced interpretations of the scrolls that led him to tell Israeli newspapers
that Judaism was a "horrible religion."
Jones
has focused on one particular scroll, the only one made of copper, which was
found in the same general area but five years later than the others. While most
of the scrolls are religious writings and stories, the Copper Scroll reads like
a simple inventory. Jones and others believe that the scroll provides clues to
discovering archaeological evidence--such as the Ark--that might establish that
Jews have a God-given right to the land of Israel.
Jones
believes you can read through a coded text of the Copper Scroll to find 32
sites for temple treasures. But, he says, you have to read it diagonally.
Throughout
the '70s and the '80s, Jones made his way to and from Israel. In the United
States, he picked up preaching work where he could
get it. Elbert Peak, a television minister who broadcasts in
Abilene, recalls that Jones would come and help with
"prophecy conferences" that Peak produced for his
congregation.
Jones
also received help from Christians who were beginning to buy into his line of
thinking about Noah. "I think he was mostly just supported by free-will
gifts," Peak says, "which was good for him."
It
wasn't until 1988 that Jones claimed his first Copper Scroll-related find: a jug of oil located in the caves in the Qumran area.
In a front-page story in The New York Times, Jones said it was
the vessel for anointing oil used by the religious leaders in Solomon's Temple.
His digging had been in association with Hebrew University, so the press
accepted his claim readily at the time. In academic
papers published a few years later, however, two Haifa university professors
stated that the oil found inside resembled what is extracted in modern times
from date stones. "No such oil was known in antiquity," the
professors wrote.
Four
years later, Jones,
who was spending his summer in Israel and winters in Texas, made another
discovery. He held a news conference in the Qumran desert to announce he
had excavated 900 pounds of red dirt. Standing beside Jones, a chemical analyst
who produced a paper on the stationery of Israel's famed Weitzmann Institute of
Science, identified the compound as very likely having eight of the 11 spices
that supposedly constituted the holy incense used in Solomon's Temple to purify
worshipers.
When reporters later called the Weitzmann Institute, however, they
were told that Jones' effort had no connection to the school. The scientist who
had stood by his side at the news conference was merely a consultant, the
Weitzmann officials said.
Asked
about this discrepancy these days, Jones defers the question to Jim Hooter, a
man he calls a bio-paleontologist in Iowa. Hooter does not link himself to any
academic institution, but he says that he found 14 spices in the compound,
including all the spices of temple incense and three additional kinds of cinnamon.
The
incense discovery brought Jones a flood of publicity, but it also invited trouble. A week after his news conference,
the Israeli antiquities authorities yanked Jones' permit to dig.
"This
isn't something personal," an Israeli government spokesman
told The Associated Press at the time. "The main
problem is we never give a license to someone who isn't an archaeologist."
For
Jones' followers, who helped him by giving money and volunteering on the
digs--flying to Israel for months at a time and arising at 4 a.m. to labor in
sweltering heat--the discovery of the incense provided proof: The Copper
Scroll's clues could lead to rebuilding the temple.
"Things
were really stacking up," says Don Hutchison, a 73-year-old wealthy real
estate developer from Kansas City, Missouri, who has been with Jones on most of
his digs and contributed significant amounts in the past two decades to his
expenses. In 1986, Hutchison heard Jones talk of his discoveries on a local
television show in Kansas City.
Impressed,
Hutchison called the television station and asked to meet with the former
preacher, who was already talking about his interpretations of the Torah and
its meaning for Gentiles. "Vendyl asked me if I was into the Bible,"
Hutchison recalls. "I told him I had read it five times. He said to read
it five times more and then come talk to him."
Hutchison
flew to Texas to meet Jones and became more excited about his work. Jones was
living in Arlington then and had an office where he had established what he
called a research institute to handle the administration of the flow of funds
from his followers. Soon, the archaeology and the Torah reading became
inseparable. "It started opening up my mind," says Hutchison, a former
fundamentalist Christian. "It wasn't the archaeology. It was something
that made sense. There is something going on when this man can pull the things
he can out of the Torah."
Jones
impresses Hutchison and others when he often drops prophetic notions into his
writings and talks. In a letter to prospective financial supporters, for
instance, Jones includes a photograph of himself standing beside one of the
caves in Qumran where, at that particular angle, anyway, his profile seems to
have been carved by nature into the stone at the entrance--a hint of destiny,
he writes.
Some of Jones' one-time followers have found his prophecies a little
too self-serving.
J. David Davis, a former Baptist preacher in eastern Tennessee, who stripped
the steeple from his church when he transformed his former Christian
congregation into B'nai Noach in 1989, met Jones in the early '80s. The two men
say they were once close, but now Davis concedes he
keeps "a dossier" on Jones to provide detail for reporters about some
of his more dubious claims.
"I totally reject everything he says," says
Davis, who previously participated in some of the digs. "A man can say
anything. He has found a vial of oil, a mile away from where he says it was.
You can have a press conference and have nothing."
Davis eventually peeled from Jones' movement because, he contends, "The
emphasis would always shift to archaeology and raising money."
In
a quarterly newsletter to adherents, Jones wrote: "All the mystery is
still there, so near yet so far away...How many times did Moses have to go up
Sinai before he succeeded in receiving the Torah? Three times."
Jones
too expects to try a third time to unearth the Ark of the Covenant from a
Qumran cave. [CR NOTE: 16 years later and still nothing] This
summer, he received a permit from Israeli authorities to drill into one of the
underground caves in Qumran. He was, however,
explicitly barred from excavating or even moving stones. He planned
to drill down into the cave, drop in a lipstick-sized camera, and determine if
the cavity was worth pursuing further. Israeli authorities insisted that Jones
only reach his drilling site by helicopter--to reduce ecological damage--and
the whole effort became an unbearably expensive affair, Jones told supporters,
amounting to about $2,500 a day in costs. Moreover,
he found nothing.
"I
was distressed because of the political jeopardy that the pagan Gentile nations
have forced on Israel at this hour," Jones writes in another missive to
his followers. "Opening this chamber...would shock Israel and the world
into a new mode of thinking."
He
also noted that the effort put him $42,000 in debt and that the summer had
caused a slump in donations.
"This
is a solemn call to arms," Jones said at the end of the letter. "Our
work, and eventually our survival and our future, depends [sic] on your prompt
response."
To academics like Friedman, who see money that could go to his
graduate students wasted on Jones' efforts, the Grand Prairie former preacher
proves just one precept: "You can fool the public
for quite a long time."
©2005 New
Times, Inc. All rights reserved.
Source:
Dallas
Observer, Thursday,
September 28, 2000, Pg. 1; [http://www.dallasobserver.com/2000-09-28/news/seeker-of-the-lost-ark/]