Readers of the Old Testament are familiar with the Ark of the Covenant, the sacred golden chest carried by the Israelites during their wanderings in the desert and finally placed in the temple built by King Solomon. The 1981 adventure/fantasy film Raiders of the Lost Ark by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas introduced a Hollywood version of the Ark to a much larger global audience outside the Jewish and Christian traditions. That movie ends with the Ark disappearing in a large crate, along with thousands of other similar crates, into a huge U.S. government warehouse. The Ark did indeed disappear,...