Everybody knows it's in a government warehouse.
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.
I am fairly sure that the Ark of the Covenant is in Heaven, sitting close to the Throne of the Almighty.
By some accounts, it is lost in a US government storehouse, where it was supposed to be studied by “Top Men”.
Ah, yes! Yet another of the hundreds of Ark threads on FR!
Ark of the Covenant has no bearing anymore since Christ died on the Cross other than for the Anti-Christ...
Everybody knows it's in a government warehouse.
If it’s hidden inside the church, it must be one hell’va big church!
RE: If it’s hidden inside the church, it must be one hell’va big church!
Don’t confuse the Ark of Covenant with Noah’s Ark.
I don’t think the Ark is in Ethiopia. If so, why wouldn’t they return it to Israel, the rightful owner? Other countries return artifacts to the place of origin all the time...
I vaguely remember hearing that Parfitt’s own theory is that the “ark” is in fact a large, wooden bowl that was used as a battle drum to lead men into war. It was so large and loud that it would strike fear into opponents — or something like that. He eventually found the remains of the drum mouldering in the storage room of a small African museum.
Everyone loves a good tourist attraction, especially one that never has to be seen.
Please pardon me, while I possibly show my ignorance... but simple question: How would one know one was looking at the Ark of the Covenant? Aren't any drawings/visuals of it purely artist renditions of it? Would one need to look inside it to verify the commandment tablets? Are the actual dimensions known? Width/depth/height? Its ornamentation?
> I don’t think the Ark is in Ethiopia. <
Italy occupied Ethiopia from 1936 to 1941. I’d guess that if the Ark were there, Mussolini would have moved heaven and earth to find it.
The Aksum story is very old, so this report says nothing new. I sincerely doubt that the Ark is in Ethiopia. Solomon built the Temple with many hidden rooms and passages deep below the surface of Temple Mount, and it is quite likely that it was hidden there by the Priests at the order of King Josiah well before the city and First Temple fell.
Read the Bible: EXODUS 25:10-22
The Book of Exodus gives detailed instructions on how the Ark is to be constructed. It is to be 2½ cubits in length, 1½ in breadth, and 1½ in height (approximately 131×79×79 cm or 52×31×31 in). Then it is to be gilded entirely with gold, and a crown or molding of gold is to be put around it. Four rings of gold are to be attached to its four corners, two on each side—and through these rings staves of shittim-wood overlaid with gold for carrying the Ark are to be inserted; and these are not to be removed.
A golden lid, the kapporet (traditionally “mercy seat” in Christian translations) which is covered with 2 golden cherubim, is to be placed above the Ark. Missing from the account are instructions concerning the thickness of the mercy seat and details about the cherubim other than that the cover be beaten out the ends of the Ark and that they form the space where God will appear. The Ark is finally to be placed under the veil of the covering.
“...containing the stone tablets bearing the Ten Commandments given to Moses by God...”
If you believe Mel Brooks (and why wouldn’t you?), there’s also the issue of the 5 missing Commandments - you know, the ones that were destroyed when Moses dropped one of the tablets on the ground.
I’d be very curious as to what the lost 5 Commandments were about.
Right beside the crate saying “BARRY SOTERO private documents and birth certificate”..
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