Posted on 12/12/2018 10:06:32 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The search for the Ark of the Covenant has led to renewed speculation that the biblical artifact may be hidden inside a church in Ethiopia, but historians have pushed back against the theory.
Archaeologists have searched for centuries for clues and hints of where the Ark, containing the stone tablets bearing the Ten Commandments given to Moses by God, could be.
The BASE Institute has sent research teams to Ethiopia, Egypt, Israel and Rome and it believes the evidence points to Ethiopia.
Although it has not found the actual Ark, it stated, "As unusual as this may sound, the BASE team has uncovered compelling evidence that the Ark may well have been spirited up the Nile River to an eventual resting place in the remote highlands of ancient Kush–modern-day Ethiopia."
Some claim that the artifact lies specifically inside the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Aksum, Ethiopia.
Monks serving as guardians do not allow historians and archaeologists to come investigate. The chapel is said to be "off-limits to all but a few members of the Ethiopian Christian church hierarchy, hindering any independent confirmation of their authenticity.”
Fueling the speculation are old accounts by late British scholar and historian Edward Ullendorff, who claimed to have seen the Ark inside during World War II.
Live Science spoke last week with Tudor Parfitt, who was also a professor at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies, and heard Ullendorff's claim firsthand.
Parfitt, now a professor of religion at Florida International University, clarified that what Ullendorff saw in 1941, when he was a British army officer leading forces into Ethiopia, was a copy, and not the actual Ark.
Furthermore, he clarified that Ullendorff never actually believed it was the real Ark, but kept the pretense due to his work in the African country.
"He went to the Church of Mary of Zion with a couple of soldiers," Parfitt said, but Ullendorff was refused entry by the guards, who said the church is holy.
"He said, 'Well, I'm sorry, but I want to go in,'" and "he did go in with his soldiers behind him. They couldn't do anything to stop him," Parfitt explained.
"What he saw was what you find in any Ethiopian church, which is a model of the Ark of the Covenant," the professor stated.
Ullendorff privately admitted at the time that the artifact “didn't differ in any way from many arks he had seen in other churches in Ethiopia," and that it wasn’t the original biblical Ark.
Since Ullendorf continued working in Ethiopia after the war and became a personal friend of the emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, he did not want to hurt the people’s feelings and claim that the Ark inside the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion was not the real one.
Ullendorff made such an admission in a Los Angeles Times article in 1992 but hoped that Ethiopian authorities would not become aware of it. His supposed claim to have seen the real Ark was not challenged in Ethiopia itself.
In other research, archaeologists working at Shiloh in the West Bank found 10 pre-First Temple pottery jugs in July 2017, which they said could point in the direction of the Ark of the Covenant.
As the Bible describes in the Psalms and in the book of Jeremiah, Shiloh was destroyed when the Israelites were defeated by the Philistines, who stole the Ark.
"This is a very exciting find. The destruction could have been caused by the Philistine invasion and the fire that raged [at Shiloh]," Hanina Hizami, coordination officer for archaeology at the Civil Administration, said at the time.
According to an article in the Saturday Evening Post in 1948, Emperor Halle Sallasee took the future Queen Elizabeth into the secret chamber in the Church and showed her the original Ark.
Married to Stephen Bishop (”On and On”), who wrote a bunch of music for movies and pal of Eric Clapton.
The Ten Commandments, and Jesus refered constantly to The Law.
“I don’t think the Ark is in Ethiopia. If so, why wouldn’t they return it to Israel, the rightful owner?”
The Ark disappears from history just prior to the Babylonian conquest and exile of the Jews.
So if there is any truth to the Axum story the Ark would have been spirited out of Jerusalem ahead of the Babylonian invasion.
It might have been taken to a Jewish community on Elephantine Island in the Nile where there was a small Temple. That community seems to have existed while Egypt was under Persian rule. Around 400 BCE the Egyptians booted the Persians out and the Elephantine community ceased to exist. So were the Elephantine Jews killed off, assimilated, or did they escape? Maybe they fled south into Ethiopia, taking the Ark with them. It’s all speculation.
When you have a minute, look up Tudor Parfitt in Wikipedia. His entry gives more info on the “Ark of War” and his research into it and the Jewish or Semitic roots of the Lemba people of Africa. He’s also written at least one book on the subject. He’s a very interesting guy!
Pompeii went into the Temple in 63BC during the Seige of Jerusalem. He pushed his way into the Holy of Holies and reported that the room was empty. It stands to reason that if the Ark wasn’t in the Temple in 63, then it isn’t in Ethiopia now.
The Ark was removed from the First Temple before the Babylonian conquest (587 BC), and was never in the Second Temple that Pompey entered. Any transfer to Ethiopia happened long before 63 BC.
RE: It stands to reason that if the Ark wasn’t in the Temple in 63,
It was probably taken out of Jerusalem before Babylon’s invasion. Therefore, It can’t be in the Temple in 63 BC.
RE: then it isn’t in Ethiopia now.
That does not necessarily follow.
Revelation 11:19
19 And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.
Not sure how that follows.
After the time of Manasseh the ark is no longer mentioned. Pompeii was there five hundred years after the ark vanishes from history.
It is logical that the ark would not be there at that point.
David wrote:
According to an article in the Saturday Evening Post in 1948, Emperor Halle Sallasee took the future Queen Elizabeth into the secret chamber in the Church and showed her the original Ark.
The specific story from Ethiopia is that the Ark has been there since King Solomon, so wasn’t in the First Temple very long, if at all.
That’s a far cry from modern speculation (with no tradition to back it) that the Ark arrived in Axum with Jewish refugees hundreds of years after Solomon and his purported son Menelik.
“20 Commandments”
20?!
My god, there’s actually 10 missing commandments? Things are much worse than Mel Brooks told us about!
Beg to differ. The Ark is Gods radio, a thing of great power and needs to be left alone until needed for the protection of Israel.
The description of the Ark is in the Bible. Touching it as an impure individual will invite your destruction.
We’d have to compare Axum claims to the bible. 1 Kings 8 has the Ark in a room built for it when Solomon is alive. That’s what, the mid 900s BCE. Then there is a mention of it in 2 Chronicles 35 when Josiah is king, where it appears that the Ark is being returned to its place in the Temple. That’s the mid to early 600s BCE. Josiah dies around 609 and the Babylonian conquest follows soon after, circ 597.
It’s funny that something that we would today think to be so historically important appears to have been largely ignored by those who were in charge of it.
From the “copies” Ive seen, I don’t think many of the Ethiopians leading the churches can even read. Ive seen a copy like you describe, looking something like a giant potje carried between two poles (man front and back) and Ive seen a “copy” that looked like an old little one room wooden steeple church carried between two men side by side bridging the two inner shoulders. Neither match the description in any way.
I don’t believe it was lost at all. Josiah stashed it in a secret place prepared by Solomon, on or near the Temple.
When Jeremiah returned, he didn’t want it returned to its public place, or wasn’t sure it could be retrieved from its hiding place. Wishing to reassure people the rebuilt Temple would be valid without it, he proclaimed (Jer. 3) that it would not be remembered.
The Axum story could simply be a gold plated chest one king might give to another, and might date to Menelik. Gold likely stripped off it by now.
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