Noah's Ark Origin of the tradition According to the Book of Genesis of the Old Testament, Noah's Ark landed on the "mountains of Ararat" (Biblical , hare ararat) (). Many historians and Bible scholars agree that "Ararat" is the Hebrew name of Urartu, the geographical predecessor of Armenia; they argue that the word referred to the wider region at the time and not specifically to Mount Ararat. The phrase is translated as "mountains of Armenia" (montes Armeniae) in the Vulgate, the fourth century Latin translation of the Bible. Nevertheless, Mount Ararat is traditionally considered the resting place of Noah's Ark, and, thus, considered a biblical mountain. Mount Ararat has been associated with the Genesis account since the 11th century, and Armenians began to identify it as the ark's landing place during that time. F. C. Conybeare wrote that the mountain was "a center and focus of pagan myths and cults… and it was only in the eleventh century, after these had vanished from the popular mind, that the Armenian theologians ventured to locate on its eternal snows the resting-place of Noah's ark." Franciscan missionary William of Rubruck is usually considered the earliest reference for the tradition of Mount Ararat as the landing place of the ark in European literature. English traveler John Mandeville is another early author who mentioned Mount Ararat, "where Noah's ship rested, and it is still there." Prevalence of the tradition Most Christians identify Mount Ararat with the biblical "mountains of Ararat" "largely because it would have been the first peak to emerge from the receding flood waters", and it is where most of Western Christianity place the landing of Noah's Ark. A 1722 biblical dictionary by Austin Calmet and the 1871 Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary both point to Mount Ararat as the place where the ark rested. American missionary H. G. O. Dwight wrote in 1856 that it is "the general opinion of the learned in Europe" that the Ark landed on Mount Ararat. James Bryce wrote that the ark rested upon a "mountain in the district which the Hebrews knew as Ararat, or Armenia" in an 1878 article for the Royal Geographical Society, and he added that the biblical writer must have had Mount Ararat in mind because it is so "very much higher, more conspicuous, and more majestic than any other summit in Armenia." In 2001 Pope John Paul II declared in his homily in