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Old 06-11-2007, 03:48 AM   #1
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Default That ark of covenant........

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.
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Old 06-11-2007, 05:08 AM   #2
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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.
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?
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Old 06-11-2007, 04:34 PM   #3
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I hope for your sake the theists are christian or Jewish otherwise they may just not give a hoot.
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Old 06-11-2007, 06:50 PM   #4
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What do you think is changing about it, aside from its rumored location(s)?

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Old 06-14-2007, 06:10 AM   #5
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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:
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Old 06-14-2007, 07:15 AM   #6
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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.

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Old 06-14-2007, 07:17 AM   #7
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BTW, the Ark seems a rather Jewish thing to me, does it have any real significance (other than "that which was overridden") in Christianity?

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Old 06-14-2007, 04:50 PM   #8
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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.
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
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Old 06-14-2007, 06:23 PM   #9
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Originally Posted by mojuang View Post
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.

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.

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Old 06-14-2007, 08:33 PM   #10
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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.
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:

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10 At that time {after the golden-calf incident} Yahweh said to me {Moses}, "Carve out two tablets of stone like the former ones, and come up to me on the mountain, and make an ark of wood. 2 I will write on the tablets the words that were on the former tablets, which you smashed, and you shall put them in the ark." 3 So I made an ark of acacia wood, cut two tablets of stone like the former ones, and went up the mountain with the two tablets in my hand. 4 Then he wrote on the tablets the same words as before, the ten commandments that Yahweh had spoken to you on the mountain out of the fire on the day of the assembly; and Yahweh gave them to me. 5 So I turned and came down from the mountain, and put the tablets in the ark that I had made; and there they are, as Yahweh commanded me.
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:

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Exodus 35:10-11:
10 All who are skillful among you shall come and make all that Yahweh has commanded: the tabernacle, 11 its tent and its covering, its clasps and its frames, its bars, its pillars, and its bases; 12 the ark with its poles, the mercy seat, and the curtain for the screen;
As the story continues, we learn that a man named Bezalel made the ark:

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Exodus 37:1-9:
1 Bezalel made the ark of acacia wood; it was two and a half cubits long, a cubit and a half wide, and a cubit and a half high. 2 He overlaid it with pure gold inside and outside, and made a molding of gold around it. 3 He cast for it four rings of gold for its four feet, two rings on its one side and two rings on its other side. 4 He made poles of acacia wood, and overlaid them with gold, 5and put the poles into the rings on the sides of the ark, to carry the ark. 6 He made a mercy seat of pure gold; two cubits and a half was its length, and a cubit and a half its width. 7 He made two cherubim of hammered gold; at the two ends of the mercy seat he made them, 8 one cherub at the one end, and one cherub at the other end; of one piece with the mercy seat he made the cherubim at its two ends. 9 The cherubim spread out their wings above, overshadowing the mercy seatd with their wings. They faced one another; the faces of the cherubim were turned toward the mercy seat.
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:

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Exodus 40:1-4; 16-20
Yahweh spoke to Moses: 2 On the first day of the first month you shall set up the tabernacle of the tent of meeting. 3 You shall put in it the ark of the covenant, and you shall screen the ark with the curtain. 4 You shall bring in the table, and arrange its setting; and you shall bring in the lampstand, and set up its lamps... 16 Moses did everything just as Yahweh had commanded him. 17 In the first month in the second year, on the first day of the month, the tabernacle was set up. 18 Moses set up the tabernacle; he laid its bases, and set up its frames, and put in its poles, and raised up its pillars; 19and he spread the tent over the tabernacle, and put the covering of the tent over it; as the LORD had commanded Moses. 20 He took the covenant {ten commandments} and put it into the ark...
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:

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One finds in the records that the prophet Jeremiah ordered those who were being deported to take some of the fire, as has been mentioned, 2and that the prophet, after giving them the law, instructed those who were being deported not to forget the commandments of the Lord, or to be led astray in their thoughts on seeing the gold and silver statues and their adornment. 3And with other similar words he exhorted them that the law should not depart from their hearts.
4 It was also in the same document that the prophet, having received an oracle, ordered that the tent and the ark should follow with him, and that he went out to the mountain where Moses had gone up and had seen the inheritance of God. 5 Jeremiah came and found a cave-dwelling, and he brought there the tent and the ark and the altar of incense; then he sealed up the entrance. 6 Some of those who followed him came up intending to mark the way, but could not find it. 7 When Jeremiah learned of it, he rebuked them and declared: "The place shall remain unknown until God gathers his people together again and shows his mercy. 8Then the Lord will disclose these things, and the glory of the Lord and the cloud will appear, as they were shown in the case of Moses, and as Solomon asked that the place should be specially consecrated."
Thus here is one answer to the question of what happened to the ark: it was "sealed up" until the appropriate time.
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