...and if this title is not one of them, then I am a monkey's uncle. The title to which I refer is:
"Has the Ark of the Covenant been Found? Monumental Structure Unearthed at Tel Shiloh"
That was the title of an article in the Jerusalem Post, dated August 8, 2025. The article, as can be surmised from the title, obviously was about an archaeological discovery that would have had extremely significant religious, cultural and historical ramifications if the ark had actually been discovered. The question of whether or not the Ark of the Covenant has been found in the title, then the article about archaeologists discovering an ancient structure, believed to have been a Jewish place of worship post-Exodus, maybe even the first stone and mortar Jewish post-Exodus temple, has one reading it with great interest, and has one hoping, maybe even expecting, to get to the part of the article that tells about this truly magnificent discovery.
The thing is, they did not find the ark. The photo above is not from the article but was among many other images in a DuckDuckGo (quack quack) search of: Ark of the Covenant images. Oddly enough, after posting the search link, I went back to get the actual link for the photo but the photo, like the actual missing ark, has disappeared and is now missing from the search results! What an eerie coincidence, but I would think it may show up again if I keep searching. I am guessing that the images, resulting in the image search, try to depict a description of the ark from the Bible; almost everyone I looked at was gold and had two angels up on top, with poles attached at the bottom by which it could be carried. What the article says was the thing they actually found was evidently a Jewish post-Exodus temple, just as was the one described in the Bible that was said to have housed the Ark of the Covenant. In fact, as per the archaeologists, that temple matches said description in great detail, once again meaning archaeological findings have shown at least parts of the bible to be accurate in content.
As to what happened to the ark and where it may be located, if it still exists today, those are a mystery that has not yet been solved. if there was an ark as described, I suppose the ark could be hidden somewhere within or near those temple ruins. If it is there and if it is found, that would be a truly stupendous discovery. If found and if it still holds its purported contents, the tablets of the Ten Commandments, that would be absolutely awesome. Since the ark was supposedly made of, or at least covered in, gold, it would be even more amazing that someone had not already found it ages ago and melted the gold down to possess a fortune or simply sold it to the highest bidder to that same end. In fact it has been believed that the ark had been captured by the Philistines during a war with the Israelites. That seizure was supposedly made after the Israelites carried the ark into that battle, a battle in which they were defeated. Why carry a valuable gold chest, containing such important stone tablets, into battle? Well, I suppose, because they believed that to touch it or to open it and look inside would have deadly effects; so, maybe they thought it could be used as a weapon of war against their enemies. I seem to vaguely recall - from many years ago, prior to the age of the Internet - speculation that the tablets or the ark itself may have been radioactive. If real, radioactivity could explain why it was said to be lethal if someone touched it or viewed its contents. Of course, it could all have been a bunch of bunk meant to keep anyone from opening it only to find a few slabs of stone with no inscriptions or in other words to find a religious hoax. In effect, the mystery of the ark lives on and we may never know any more about it than what we can speculate from what was written about it in the best selling book in all of history. Then again, who knows, maybe it will be discovered someday and a lot of answers, to many millennia old questions about it, will be answered.
While the article is quite interesting, the question in the title gives one a sense of hope that is utterly destroyed once you realize it indeed has not been found. So, the article's title, when it appears online, is essentially click-bait. Very disappointing, at least to me.
2 comments:
FWIW in Addis Ababa, a priest is chosen every few years to watch over a temple with something of Biblical import. Thing is, priests don 't last long at the job, dying from what appear to be radiation-caused cancers.
I remember that article. I too thought the headline was ridiculously misleading.
Post a Comment