mojuang

The role of this ark seems to be changing all over!from its making to its destruction the old testament seems to gloss over without actually saying what it was for.Some brains out there help because am meeting theists soon and it shall be the point of discussion.

seven8s

If the ark contains two sets of commandments, those two sets would consist of, those that Moses Broke, and those he kept, correct? As to the staff that bloomed...........that would be omnipotence, correct? Of course that can be seen as a double edged sword as well, correct?

WishboneDawn

I hope for your sake the theists are christian or Jewish otherwise they may just not give a hoot.

Toto

What do you think is changing about it, aside from its rumored location(s)?

Ark_of_the_Covenant

mojuang

What i meant is that in the different epochs the role of the ark chnges.sometime it was taken to the warfront later when stolen from the temple it spread the plague till those who stole it had to send it back in an ingenious way.The poor isralites who were happy to see it back all were smitten for having glimpsed into it!! The sons of Eli are aso accused of having done something to it.....Much later a king of israel (Josiah?)had it opened and took out the old wisdom.......In the ensuing period another had it destroyed as a symbol of idolatry? Say something TOTO:huh:

gstafleu

The Wiki article has the Ark placed in the temple in Kings 8:8. This is Solomon's temple, and according to Finkelstein and Silberman (The Bible Unearthed) Solomon never built a temple. This would make it seem that the Ark is purely myth, or are there any reasons to believe there was an Historical Ark at some point? If the Ark is indeed solely myth, then any elaborations on the theme that were written after the Solomon bit was written (say 7C BCE?) should be seen as further myth formation. A good recent example of that is of course the Indiana Jones movie which, history-wise, should carry as much weight as anything else.

Gerard Stafleu

gstafleu

BTW, the Ark seems a rather Jewish thing to me, does it have any real significance (other than "that which was overridden") in Christianity?

Gerard Stafleu

Amedeo

I don't know of any argumentative (probatory) value that the Ark could have for theists or for Jewish religionists in particular, any more than Moses' burning bush, where he heard God's voice, has any probatory value.

At any rate, as the Ark was spoken of as containing the Commandament tablets or other sacred objects, it was a chest for sacred/ceremonial things that we find in other religion or praeternatural rituals of the ancient [in the Eleusinian rites, etc.] In ancient times, things and place and times which had had some connection with divine manifestations were held sacred -- untouchable, not to be gazed upon (except for qualified people), etc. And like relics of holy people or parts of Jesus' bodies, they were believed to contain something of the "power" of the divine or supernatural agent. So, many sacred things became idols. The Egyptians believed that images/statues of gods had some of this divine power; so, they worshipped or invoked them. As the Israelites rejected the practice of idolatry, then, if they had and kept the ark, the ark itself, or the things in it, was not an idol for them. Was it then just a container for the safekeeping of sacred objects?

Not if God spoke to Moses from the cherubs on top of the ark. And why should the ark have cherubs, unless they were representations of the heavenly cherub that are associated with God??? And whay was it carried in battle unless it some function in the military enterprise? Something analogous was brought by some Christians in battle: the "carroccio" that the people of Milan set up for the confrontation of the invading Fredrick Barbarossa [who was actually repelled in his original invasion]. It consisted of an ox-wagon on which an adorned banner of the Holy Lady was placed. The symbolism is this, that the holy mother of god would lead them to victory or at least protect them.

In one of the secret documents that Sauniere found in the church of St, Mary Magdalene (in Rennes-le-Chateau), there is an enigmatic French phrase, "le cheval de Dieu," which means "the horse of God." In the context of many things, I interpreted it as meaning the "horse" on which the Lord Sabaoth rode in battle, namely, the ark which, like a horse, carried God in battle. I surmised that the Israelities carried the ark in battle, because on top of it lay the divine leader, the Sabaoth, the same one that spoke to Moses from the top of the ark. So, nothing could be more sacred to the Islaelites than the ark. It was kept in the sacrum sacrorum of the temple, on which no eprson could gaze except the appointed priests or "solis sacerdotibus" as the Sauniere document enigmatically says [ which Mr. Lincoln, the investigator of Rennes-le Chateau, misunderstood entirely. It says, "for priests only," which he took to mean "for the initiates into the Order of the Templar only." (Because of a couple of linguistic mistakes, he never figured out where the alleged treasure of the Templars was, or what this treasure consisted of.)

You see, all the Jews who replied to you did not answer YOUR question, because they don't know exactly what the ark was, aside from being a container. Maybe they forgot who Yahweh Sabaoth was.

At least such things as the ark and the carroccio are like the national flags than one carries in battle in front of the advancing soldiers: It raises the courage of the combatants. Thus, a Christian Latin song of the 6th century, says, "Vexilla regis..." -- the banner of the the king [Jsus King] is advancing... And this was the song that the crusaders sang as they advanced armed toward Jerusalem, and words from that song were quoted by Sauniere who hid a treasure he had discovered. He hid the "battle-banner" which the Israelites had used and the Templars found [in Ethiopia, not in the basements of the Temple that Herod built]. So, whether Solomon built the previous Temple or not, the fact is irrelevant to the ark, just as the second Temple was.

The Templar "treasure", says a document, belongs to the Merovingians, that is, the royals in the bloodline of King David, through King Jesus [who was crucified as the King of the Judaeans]. Maybe there was never a Jesus, and maybe he never had any descendants, and, therefore Godfrey of Bouillon had no legitimate claim to the throne of Jerusalem, but all this does not preclude that the original nine Templars "found and secured' [in the extant Axum fort, in Ethiopia"] an unrevealed treasure they were sent to find....the "banner" of the king, the horse of God (Sabatius/Sabaoth), the...
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I found the translation of Y. Sabaoth: commander of armies
http://www.jacksonsnyder.com/arc/2004/commander.htm

Cheerful Charlie

All competent Near East archeologists state that the Exodus did not happen, it was myth, not history. The Torah, Judges and Joshua are not history. No exodus, no 40 years wandering, no genocidal assault on Canaan, no Moses on the mount, no ark of the convenent.

If there ever was such a thing it was create long, long after Israel was long established. Such a thing was probably destroyed by the Assyrians for any gold it had.

CC

John Kesler

When you speak with these "theists," ask them who made the ark and when the ten commandments were placed in it:

Deuteronomy 10 claims that Moses made the ark at the same time that he carved two tablets for the replacement set of commandments:

By contrast, Exodus 35 claims that after Moses descended with the second set of commandments, he commissioned "all who are skillful" to make various cultic objects, including the ark:

As the story continues, we learn that a man named Bezalel made the ark:

Now look at chapter 40. We aren't told how much time has now elapsed, but the tabernacle and its contents, the construction of which hadn't even begun until after Moses received the ten commandments, have now been built:

The contradictions are obvious, and claiming that Moses "made" the ark via Bezalel--as a contractor "builds" a house--won't work, because the obvious intent of Deuteronomy is that Moses made both the tablets and ark, the latter's purpose to serve as a receptacle for the former, and there is no allowance for the amount of time required to build the tabernacle and its contents to intervene between the receipt of the commandments and their placement in the ark. Don't make the mistake of conflating the elaborate, gold-laden ark of Exodus with Deuteronomy's nondescript, utilitarian "ark of wood."

On another note, 2 Maccabees 2 contains an interesting tradition:

Thus here is one answer to the question of what happened to the ark: it was "sealed up" until the appropriate time.