What happened to the Ark of the Covenant?


UPDATES

7 pm Israel time, Tuesday, May 5 2015

**With the Wednesday deadline to form a coalition government looming, the fight between Naftali Bennett’s Jewish Home party and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud has taken center stage. In order to form a new “right-wing” government, Netanyahu must have Bennett’s 8 seats.

The situation seemed to have resolved itself before Avigdor Lieberman announced his resignation yesterday. Bennett was set to become the Education Minister and fellow Jewish Home representative Ayelet Shaked the Culture and Sports Minister, but now Bennett wants the Foreign Ministry–a post that Netanyahu will apparently not give him.

Failing that, Bennett wants Jewish Home to receive the Education and Justice Ministries. The Minister of Justice is an especially powerful post in Israel, and whether Bennett will receive it is anyone’s guess, but we should know by tomorrow afternoon.

Your humble servant would love to see Naftali Bennett as the Justice Minister and Ayelet Shaked as Education Minister.

**At this hour:

–Fierce battles are taking place in eastern Lebanon near the border with Syria between Hezbollah and militants belonging to the Al-Nusra rebel front. In an extraordinary statement today, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said that if Bashar Assad falls in Syria, Hezbollah will fall as well.

–Fierce battles are taking place along the Saudi-Yemen border. Houthi rebels have begun firing Katyusha rockets into Saudi Arabia as the Saudi air force continues to pound Houthi positions.

–Fierce battles are taking place in the northern Sinai. The Egyptian Army has destroyed at least 20 terrorist structures and captured numerous fighters.

**In the Palestinian state of Gaza:

–Internecine warfare is on the verge of erupting between Hamas and the Salafist Movement in Gaza associated with IS. In the last week, nearly 40 Salafist militants have been arrested and charged with planting explosives at UNRWA facilities and elsewhere.

The Salafis has issued a warning to Hamas that if all Salafi prisoners are not released in the next 48 hours, they will attack Hamas on all fronts. This afternoon, a large explosion rocked beside a Hamas headquarters in Khan Younis.

TODAY’S BLOG:

Ancient-Aliens-ark-covenant

We all know the story–or maybe we don’t.

Built by Moses and containing the original two tablets of the Ten Commandments, the Ark of the Covenant preceded the Israelites as they passed through the desert on their way to the promised land. 

At the battle of Jericho, the Ark was carried around the walls of the city seven times before the city’s walls crumbled.  Afterwards, the Ark was eventually ensconced at Shiloh.
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Much later, the Ark was captured by the Philistines and brought to my home city, Ashdod, where it was placed in the temple of Dagon.  The next morning, the idol had fallen on the floor in front of the Ark and over the course of the next seven months, the people of Ashdod suffered plagues of mice and boils–so much so that the Philistines returned the Ark to the Israelites.

The Ark was carried to various places by King David until eventually it was placed inside Solomon’s Temple in the Holy of Holies, a special inner room in which the Ark was placed on the Foundation Stone. Hundreds of years later, when the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the First Temple, the Ark vanished from history.

We know the traditions and theories. One holds that the prophet Jeremiah, seeing that the Babylonian destruction was imminent, took the Ark and buried it in a cave on Mt. Nebo–southeast of Jerusalem on the Jordan River. Another suggests that Menelik I carried the Ark to Ethiopia where it is currently kept by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church in Axum. Other writers have claimed the Ark was taken to Chartres by the Knights Templar or to Rome, Egypt, Ireland, or even the United States.

But back to the considerably less far-fetched Jewish perspective. The Book of Ezra notes that the Babylonians took “holy vessels” with them back to Babylonia–but does not mention the Ark. Nevertheless, rabbis have been divided as to what happened to the Ark: was it indeed carried back to Babylon or was it secreted away in a hidden cave or room under the Foundation Stone inside the First Temple by King Josiah?

All of which brings us back to a story reported on israelstreet last week–concerning the Islamic Wakf’s changing of the carpets in the Kipat HaSela (Dome of the Rock). As you recall (click here to reread), the carpet changing extended to the cave under the Foundation Stone where the Muslims have created a prayer room.

What I did not mention last week is that in uncovering the floor of that room, the marble slab that covers the entrance to a much deeper space was exposed. This deeper space which extends far under the Temple Mount is thought to contain numerous undiscovered side caves and rooms. This is precisely the area in which some rabbis thought that the Ark of the Covenant was hidden by Josiah.

Jewish tradition holds that the hole connects to all of the water sources in the world, and that it was through the hole that the flood waters came at the time of Noah. Both Jews and Muslims agree that to open the slab would risk flooding the world again.

More than this, Muslims will not enter because they believe that the slab guards the entrance to the underworld and all of the souls of the dead. A loose translation of the Arabic name for the deep area is “The Hell Hole”.

This is not to say that no one has ever been down the hole. Captain Montague Parker led a group of men down into the space in 1908-1911 after secretly bribing the Turks. It was claimed that he took 10 boxes of Temple treasures out of the hole–including the staff of Moses, Temple vessels, the crown of Solomon, and perhaps the Ark. Parker vehemently denied the charges (you can read part of an interesting article about this “expedition” and other theories here).

Is it possible that the Ark of the Covenant is buried deep under the Temple Mount and still rests not very far from the Foundation Stone which was inside the Holy of Holies?

Your humble servant is not delusional, but we will never know until the area is exhaustively explored–and that is not likely to happen any time soon  . . . unless another recent discovery provides a chance (to be continued tomorrow).

 

 

 

This entry was posted in News and tagged Ark, ashdod, covenant, Dagon, David, dome of the rock, Ethiopia, flood, hell hole, jericho, josiah, kipat hasela, knights templar, marble slab, menelik, montague parker, moses, noah, solomon. Bookmark the permalink.

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