The Ancients - The Ark of the Covenant

Episode Date: June 19, 2024

The Ark of the Covenant is one of the most famous, yet mysterious, objects mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. This special box that held the sacred 10 Commandments, written by God himself.But what exactly was it? What stories are told about it? And, most intriguingly of all, what happened to it? Tristan Hughes visits the University of Cardiff and Dr Dylan Johnson to find out.Presented by Tristan Hughes. The producer is Joseph Knight, audio editor is Aidan Lonergan. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.The Ancients is a podcast from History Hit.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code ANCIENTS - sign up here.Vote for The Ancients in the Listeners Choice category of British Podcast Awards here.You can take part in our listener survey here.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It is one of the most famous yet mysterious objects mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. This special box that held the sacred Ten Commandments written by God. That was carried through the desert, taken to the promised land, captured by the Philistines, reclaimed by the Israelites,

placed in Jerusalem, before disappearing in the early 6th century BC. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and today we're talking about the captivating object that was the Ark of the Covenant. It is one of the most important objects in the Old Testament and a name well known today. You might remember it being the artifact searched for by Indiana Jones and his Nazi enemies in Raiders of the Lost Ark. But what exactly was it? What stories are told about the Ark? And, most intriguingly of all, what happened to it? Well today's episode is going to explore all of that. Our guest is Dr. Dylan Johnson from the University of Cardiff. Now that name may well sound familiar, as Dylan was the guest for our episode about Moses and the Exodus,

another of our episodes in our Old Testament miniseries. Now in that episode, Dylan and I, we did our interview remotely. This time around, we had the delight of recording in person in Dylan's office at the University of Cardiff. I really do hope you enjoy. Dylan, it is wonderful to have you on the podcast today. Thank you for inviting me. You're more than welcome. In your office as well, in Cardiff, to talk about the Ark of the Covenant. There's something about this object, whether it's because of Indiana Jones or other reasons,

that it has just become a name that we've all heard of down to this present day. It's a captivating object. become a name that we've all heard of down to this present day. It's a captivating object. Its history is extremely interesting, both in the Bible, but also in its reception afterwards. So yeah, it's a fascinating topic for discussion, certainly. Well, let's explore the literature surrounding this object first, and then look at archaeology and whether there is any archaeology to really affirm this object and its existence. First off, what literature do we have that mentions the Ark of the Covenant? So essentially, we just have the biblical narrative, and that should probably be subdivided into different sections based on where it's found in the Bible. But beyond that,

not much. We have what we'll call reception history. So we have writings about the Ark reflecting on the biblical narratives that come somewhat outside the time that we conventionally call the biblical period. But again, it's reliant on those narratives that we find in the Bible. So we don't have any other contemporary discussions of it. So it is just the Old Testament, but as I say, we can kind of divide that up a bit more into different subsections as we explore its story. Exactly. First off, we call it the Ark of the Covenant, but what exactly is an ark? Because my mind immediately thinks of something like Noah. Right. Well, that's a funny accident of translation that we actually have two famous arks in the Hebrew Bible, one being the Ark of Noah, which is a boat, and the Ark of the

Covenant, which is a box. And it's actually very distinct in the Hebrew. So the Hebrew describes the Ark of Noah as a teva, which is pretty unambiguously a fairly large boat, whereas the Ark of the Covenant is called a ron in Hebrew. So they're completely different words, completely different concepts, objects, whatever you want to describe them. It's just an accident really of Latin and Greek that they have kind of converged in English translations of the Bible. And so an ark in this case, it means a big box, does it? I don't know about the size exactly.

At least it means a box. We have pretty specific descriptions of it. it means a box. We have pretty specific descriptions of it. It might not so much be the size that matters, but it's the, let's say, the elegance of the object or what's inside is particularly valuable. We'll definitely get to all that, but actually a bit more on what you mentioned earlier about how this object is mentioned several times in the Old Testament. So is this a frequent artifact that is mentioned in times in the Old Testament. So, is this a frequent artifact that is mentioned in the Hebrew Bible? Yes and no. It's mentioned about 200 times, so that's a fair number of times to have a singular object mentioned, but it tends to be isolated to

specific sections. So, in the book of Exodus, it figures prominently because that's when it's being constructed. In the book of Samuel, in 1 Samuel, it figures very prominently in a set of stories about its capture. And then somewhat later in the books of Kings about its installation in Jerusalem and then ultimately in the temple. And then that's it. And then it stops. So for the rest of the biblical text, we get maybe one or two references to it. So it is frequent, but only in concentrated doses. Concentrated doses.

Well, let's go to the start and the story of its creation. Dylan, what is the context as to why and how it is created in the book of Exodus? Why do we get this thing, which is called the Ark of the Covenant? Right. So it's created in the context of Moses' encounter with God, whose name is Yahweh, the God of Israel, on a sacred mountain, which is sometimes called Mount Sinai and sometimes called Mount Horeb, depending on which place in the text you're reading. And he and apparently his minister Joshua go up on the mountain, they encounter God, and he gives them sacred tablets. And these sacred tablets, if you read Deuteronomy,

are inscribed with the Ten Commandments. Elsewhere, these are simply called the tablets of testimony, which don't get into too much detail about what exactly is inscribed on them. But again, it's presumed to be some kind of important legal writing. And what that precipitates is a creation of this ark in which they need to be housed or placed. And it's really important because this is the only writing ascribed to God himself in the biblical text, is the Ten Commandments. The book of Deuteronomy says this is inscribed by God's finger. And otherwise, all the biblical text is ascribed to Moses or other authors. But this is particularly important because it's God himself writing it.

So obviously, you need a very special vessel to house them. And if it is God himself writing it, I know that your background is largely in ancient law, in Mesopotamia, and in ancient Judaism. Is this one of the best examples that we have in the Old Testament where those people who are writing the Old Testament, they want to portray their God as a lawgiver himself or herself as this eternal figure is also a lawgiver for them? Yes, absolutely. In fact, it's almost exclusively God who is the lawgiver. And this is what I wrote my dissertation on several texts that we'll find in the book of Leviticus and the book of Numbers, where they go to great lengths to show that Moses, who is often considered the lawgiver of Israel, is not in fact a lawgiver.

He must receive law from God, and all law ultimately emanates from this divine sovereign. And so it's a really important concept that the biblical writers are developing. And then the Ark is kind of tangentially associated with this bigger picture, I suppose you can say. And also in regards to the ark, this is a really interesting part of Exodus, isn't it? There's quite a long explanation of its actual construction, almost with like precise measurements as to it. What's the story of the construction itself?

Right, well, its story is associated with what's known as the Mishkan or the Tabernacle. So it's associated with this movable tent shrine. And in the context of this description of this movable tent shrine, which has a great deal of very specific descriptions of dimensions and types of materials used, we have the Ark of the Covenant. So the Ark of the Covenant's description is embedded in this larger description of all of the cultic accoutrements that go into this movable tent shrine. And we learn that it's made of something called acacia wood, which is a type of wood that grows in the desert. That's important for the narrative. They're in a desert, so you can't have large cedars. It's overlaid with gold leaf. It has two rings on the side through which golden

overleafed poles are pushed through. This is important because it means that the art can be carried. Then we get specific dimensions for it in cubits. Basically, we're talking about something probably the size of a large storage trunk. So nothing too massive, but not especially small either. And then one of the most important pieces is something what's called in Hebrew, the kephoret, which is, if you read the King James version of the Bible, will be called the mercy seat, but it's really a lid. And the lid of the box is made of solid gold, and it has some really ornate designs on it. Most prominently, two things called cherubs with outstretched wings. And I should probably qualify here, these are not chubby babies with

wings cherubs. These are something that look kind of a mix between sphinxes and griffins. They have the head of a human being wings, but lion-like bodies. They're a very prominent iconographic feature in ancient Near Eastern art. And actually, you can go and see exactly what they look like if you're ever at the Victorian Embankment in London near Cleopatra's Needle. Some of the benches there have cherubs along the sides of them. So if you're ever visiting London, you're near the Victorian embankment, you can see exactly what a cherub looked like.

Well, not a bad accomplishment for those if you were considering, you know, they are in the desert at that time and they can build something as elaborate as this object. But something which really struck me with that description that you mentioned there, Dylan, is this whole idea that this sacred object, it's portable.

This was meant to be carried around as they're moving around too. Yeah, exactly. So, and this has kind of engendered quite a bit of speculation about what is the need to have a portable ark, a portable box, and what is the significance of it?

And the answer is, depends. It depends on the literary context because if you were to read, let's say the answer is, depends. It depends on the literary context, because if you were to read, let's say, the Samuel stories, it's about moving the Ark around with the army. If you look at the Exodus stories, it has everything to do with this portable tent shrine, how you move basically a temple around in the wilderness while you're wandering. But it does seem to be an important feature of it in all of the different stories, that it is portable. But it does seem to be an important feature of it in all of the different stories, that it is portable.

Something which struck me straight away with that in itself is I went to Egypt just over a year ago and went to Thebes, so Luxor, ancient Thebes, and went to these temples and saw on the wall the depictions of the sacred bark and it being carried around as this portable boat. It is interesting when you look at these other societies in that area of the world in antiquity, they likewise have sacred objects that were portable that they could take from one place to another. Do we think that there is an influence there from neighboring societies in the creation, in the idea of something like the Ark of the Covenant? Some certainly do. Scott Nagel from the University of Washington proposed a very specific relationship between these things called sacred barks in ancient Egypt, which were essentially model boats, not quite full size, on which divine statues would have been carried. These boats are extremely ornate. Most interestingly, they often contain symbols of the deity

that's being carried. So depending on the deity, they have specific animals that would be associated with them, which then conjures to mind these cherubs on top of the Ark. So there's a lot of similarities, admittedly. But if you look a bit more broadly across the ancient Near East, you also start to realize that processions and carrying divine objects is very widespread. Whether you go to Mesopotamia or ancient Syria, I'm sure in Anatolia, people who are specialists with Hittites will have examples. So it's not just Egypt that we find these parallels, but in fact, all across the ancient Near East. And I think that's a really important connection to start thinking about why was this

Ark portable? Because it has something to do with processional celebrations, which are very, very common. So the Ark has started off as this portable object with these people in the desert. That's what is believed. What's the next stage in the story of the Ark of the Covenant? Where does it go after this? Well, we don't know. Basically, we assume it accompanies the Israelites. It shows up in the books of Deuteronomy. It shows up in the book of Joshua. It accompanies the Israelites into the promised land, into the land of Canaan. So it's there, but really the story kind of picks back up with it in a town called Shiloh. And it's sitting in this town called Shiloh, which is, for me, one of the most interesting components of this whole story,

because Shiloh is a very, very old cultic site as far as Israel is concerned. And the ark is sitting in Shiloh. It seems to be more or less stationary at this point. They're not wandering the desert. It doesn't need to be moved around, but it can still be portable. And it enters this new cycle of narratives that have to do with the Ark as this almost military insignia or something that is brought into the Israelite camp in these ongoing conflicts with the people known as the Philistines, which I know you've had some discussions of with other specialists who have discussed these people. Oh, yes. It enters that story, essentially.

So it almost kind of seems like in the famous movies of the Crusaders, you get them carrying the cross in front of them into battle. Is that the idea that we're kind of getting with the Ark of the Covenant, that on the battlefield they would have the Ark with them almost to kind of inspire their soldiers on? Yes and no. It's also more than that. And it would also take a little bit of understanding what exactly the cross represented to those people in those crusader armies. But from the biblical text, what we get described is it's not just a rallying symbol. It's really nothing less than the presence of God on earth, that when the ark is brought

into the army, in fact, the Philistines exclaim their God or their gods because it's the word is Elohim. So it could either be translated singular or plural. Their God has entered the camp. So the Philistines are worried because this object in some way represents the terrestrial presence of this deity. And they're extremely worried that it's going to cause them to lose this battle. And so too do the Israelites seem to think that the Ark brings with it the power and the presence of their god Yahweh into these battles. So in some senses, it's like the cross in the

sense that a cross maybe symbolizes divine presence in the world, but it's also something a bit more potent. So into this context, Dylan, of these Israelites versus the Philistines, what happens to the Ark of the Covenant? Because this is a really interesting part. Right. So this is the most interesting part for me and for many scholars, because what I just described in the book of Exodus about the connections to law giving, the placement of these tablets in it, that all looks later. That all looks like tradition that's been superimposed on something that's quite a bit older.

And that's these stories. These stories about the Ark as it's brought into this conflict between the Israelites and the Philistines. So the Philistines are these invading non-Semitic people who are coming somewhere from the Western Aegean world, Western Mediterranean world. And they're locked in conflict with the Israelites at a place called Ebenezer or Ebenezer from where the name comes from. And the Israelites are losing, so they bring the Ark. They bring it out of Shiloh, where it's been for several decades, we presume, and they bring it into the camp with the hopes that it will win them the battle. It doesn't work. The Philistines capture the Ark, and in fact, they kill two figures named Hophni and Phinehas. These are priests who work at Shiloh.

They're the sons of a man named Eli, who's also a priest at Shiloh. And these priests seem to be basically attached to the Ark. So this is a huge calamity. The Ark has been captured by the mortal enemies of Israel. The priest Eli falls off a gate and dies. His daughter-in-law miscarries, and she has this famous exclamation. As she miscarries, she tries to name her son Ichavod or Ichabod. And that means, where is the glory?

And she then explains that the glory has departed from Israel. And glory is, again, this translation tradition that develops in English about how do you articulate divine presence in a formless God? And they develop this idea of glory. So, again, it's not just that this object has been captured. It's the presence of the deity itself has been more or less kidnapped or godnapped, as the technical term is often used, by the Philistines. So the Philistines bring it to one of their capitals in Ashdod, and they place it in front of their god Dagon. Dagon is a very well-known Canaanite deity. He's a god of grain and a major deity in the Middle Euphrates region. And we don't know exactly what's going on,

but what's described is the statue of Dagon falls on its face, almost like it's bowing down to the God of Israel. And then some kind of plague or some kind of infection breaks out among the Philistines. And we get a couple descriptions of it with kind of two different words. In some translations, you'll see tumors. In other translations, you'll see hemorrhoids. So they get afflicted by this ark that's in their presence. They start to worry. They send it to another city, another Philistine city called Ekron, which is kind of more inland than Ashdod, closer to the Israelites. And they have their diviners try to figure out what's going on. And the diviners say, well, we should make golden mice and golden images of these tumors or hemorrhoids, place it on the ark, and send it back to the Israelites with these two cattle that will

pull it on a cart. And that's exactly what happens. The ark returns to the Israelites because it's caused nothing but problems for the Philistines ever since they captured it. So Dagon is one of the gods of the Philistines, did you mention that? Is that the name? And is that a name that is also attested in archaeology and so on and so forth, so we know that there was an actual deity called Dagon that was worshipped? Yes. In Akkadian literature, so the literature of ancient Mesopotamia, but also of Syria, Dagon, it's Dagon in the Bible, it's Dagon in these Akkadian texts. There's actually a famous sound shift. It's called the Canaanite shift that occurs where A goes to O. But this deity is extremely well known, widely worshipped by

West Semitic peoples all around the Euphrates region, very, very old. So, why Philistines are worshipping this Semitic god is kind of interesting. It illustrates how they've very rapidly acculturated, or so the biblical text tells us, to local traditions, traditions in the land of Canaan, in the Levant. So these are not Greek gods. If we imagine Philistines coming from the Greek-speaking world, this is a local deity that they've adopted. I had to ask because I love all those cases when you do get mentions in literature, whether it's the Bible or elsewhere, and then it can be affirmed by archaeology. So,

thank you for that slight tangent there. But continuing the story that is mentioned, so, the Ark is returned to the Israelites. It doesn't go back to Shiloh. It goes somewhere else. Where else does it go? Right. So, it passes through this kind of liminal area in Israel known as the Shephelah it's basically the the boundary between the Philistine controlled regions and early Israel so it passes into the Shephelah and goes to this town called Beit Shemesh house of the sun and it reaches the field of a man named Joshua, not the famous Joshua, just some other Joshua. And the Israelites are overjoyed. They start rejoicing. So, God kills some manuscripts, say 50 of them. Another manuscript says 50,000 of them. Why? We don't

know. And it has to do again with this ark as a marker of divine presence. It's benevolent, it's beneficial, but it's also extremely, extremely dangerous. So, the story goes, some Israelites looked inside the ark, they saw what's in there, and they died. They're not the only ones, by the way. There's several stories of people who either touch the ark or look at the ark and are met with instant death, hence the inspiration for Indiana Jones. That's where that story comes from. And so they decide that the Ark can't stay at Beit Shemesh. But instead of going to Shiloh, it goes to this other site, which sometimes is called Kiryat Ye'arim. But then sometimes we hear it called Ba'ala, and sometimes it's called Ba'ale Judah. But it's most

commonly remembered as Kiryat Yarin. And this site has been identified. So, can you describe the topography of this site that we know of? Right. So, it's actually been identified a couple times, but most secure identification was by a scholar, a biblical scholar named Edward Robinson, kind of in the 19th century, early 19th century. And he located it near the city of Abu Ghosh. Abu Ghosh is actually best known as kind of the test case for Israeli-Palestinian harmonious living because the population is both Israeli and Palestinian. So it's in the vicinity of this town. Again, it's still in this kind of liminal zone between the Philistine world and the heartland of Israel up in the highlands.

It's not a very important site. It was one of the latest excavated. It was also one of the latest identified because, again, it's not a major population center. It's kind of just a cultic site in the landscape. major population center. It's kind of just a cultic site in the landscape. So there have been ongoing excavations since 2017, I believe, by the Collège de France under Thomas Rohmer and the University of Tel Aviv under Israel Finkelstein. And they've been excavating it and they found some evidence for cultic features, cultic structures that date about to the 8th, 7th century there. So the dates are pointing towards. So it lines up. Okay. So we have some archaeological context for what the site is.

Well, exactly. I was going to think about keeping that archaeology to the end, but actually let's explore that now because it makes the most sense. Because that work of Romer and Finkelstein and their team at Curiae Fioriumium and it seems to say kind of dates that period obviously the absolute dates we're unsure of at the moment but archaeological work at that site could that potentially reveal more into i guess how much credibility truth there is to the whole arc of the covenant story at least to that episode of it. Yeah, I think it'll reveal some insights into that historical kernel of the specifically Samuel stories associated with the Ark. I don't know if we'll ever have any historical kernels with the Exodus traditions associated with the Ark, but these stories, especially the Shiloh,

Kiryat Yerarim connections are really, really interesting. Because like I mentioned, Shiloh is a very, very old cultic site. So traditions associated with Shiloh, and the Ark is kind of one of the big ones, look back on this site that probably by the time most biblical writing is going on, it's all very much in the rearview mirror. It's all retrospective. So the fact that they associated with Shiloh, and the fact they associated with this otherwise not very significant site gives some credence to the idea that there was something going on between these two important cultic sites, kind of in the liminal zone between Israel and Judah, the southern kingdom centered on Jerusalem.

Beyond that, we're really stretching the evidence, I think, whether there was an ark at these sites. Well, we kind of need to find an ark. Otherwise, what else do we have? But the fact that these are very clearly cultic installations dating roughly to the time period gives us some grounding in the fact that, yes, these stories are in fact based in some kind of historical memory. And that's the thing, isn't it? When the people are writing the Bible from, let's say, the 6th century BC onwards, it's the fact that, okay, maybe some of these stories are very much embellished, but also you kind of see it with Greek mythology and Roman mythology,

that for a lot of these stories, there is a kernel of truth, there is a basis of truth, sometimes with place names or whatever, on which those stories are added to. And so in this case, it could be a place like that is that it is known from the archaeology that they were important centers and so it's no surprise that they are then used in narratives like this one yeah exactly and i think places are very unique because places get inscribed with memory whether that's real or fictive and it's's usually a blend of both, that there's some memory that these places were once very important. What they were remembered for,

maybe there was an ark there, maybe that was an ark. It probably wasn't in exactly the way the narrative tells us. But what it probably is, is that there was some kind of importance associated with the worship of Yahweh at these two places. And perhaps there is a chronological relationship between the two of them. Maybe the cultic site moved from one to the other, because in some ways that is what the story is about. The story is about the Ark going from one place to the next. So I think there's potential there. That's what I think that archaeology can really help us reveal. Let's keep going on with the story. So QIERM, the arc in the story is placed there for a period of time, but it doesn't stay there.

Where does it ultimately end up? So ultimately, as so much of the biblical narrative ends up, is Jerusalem focused. And this is where we have to, we as in historical critical biblical scholars, already start to get a little suspicious about what's going on. Because again, Jerusalem becomes the ultimate focus of everything that has to do with Yahwistic worship. And it gives us kind of this telescope division of what it was to be an ancient Israelite, that all religion has to unfold and be focused on this side of Jerusalem. But nonetheless, the story goes that in the time of David, David captures the city of Jerusalem, and he decides that this ark, this potent symbol of Yahweh's presence on earth, needs to be brought to his new capital. This is very important because

then it unifies both the political and religious center of what it means to be a Yahweh worshiper in one place. And it also kind of finishes off the story. And this is a bit of debate between Rummer and another biblical scholar named Benedict Hensel about what is the end of the Ark story in Samuel. And Rummer says the end of the story is Kiryat Yerarim. That's where the story really ends, at least the oldest story. But this other scholar says that's not a very good ending. The ending should be ultimately the return of the Ark to Jerusalem, to the center of what it is to be a Yahweh worshiper, and really to the temple. Now, the temple is not built in the time of David.

It's built by his son, Solomon. And so we get this kind of pause in the narrative. David brings this Ark to Jerusalem, and it's sitting in a tent. And that's really embarrassing because this glorious representation of God on earth is living in a tent while the king lives in a palace. So then they build the temple and then Solomon has a very important dedicatory procession, bringing the ark into the temple where it's then surrounded, not just by the cherubs on top of the Ark, but the whole temple is covered in these images. And it then becomes kind of the

focal point of the temple. Whereas other Near Eastern cultures would have a statue of their God in what's called the Holy of Holy, the furthest most inner recess of the temple, that's where we have the Ark. So, the Ark becomes the focal point of the temple, the marker of God's presence on earth in his temple, in his holy city. And who could be with the Ark, to see the Ark, kind of use the Ark as now this great focal point of this kingdom? Just one, the high priest. And only sometimes, only on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.

Then he is allowed into the Holy of Holies after going through a very thorough purification process. Because the idea, and there's quite a bit of religious historical research that's gone into this, this idea that to enter into the presence of the deity is an extremely dangerous thing to do, and you should only undertake such a reckless endeavor if you are, I guess, protected in some way. Now, this is not a hazmat suit. This is ritual protection. So, you undergo all of these important cultic procedures, and it has to be only a specific individual because there's extreme danger to encountering the divine. Moses did it, A couple other important biblical figures do it. And then it's this priest

who not only has to go these procedures, but he has to be from the right lineage. He has to be a Levitical priest from the line of Aaron. Otherwise, you can't go there. You can't see this ark. Interesting. I love how the name Levi

goes all the way back to that, doesn't it? It's absolutely fascinating. I mean mean the limited allowance of people very limited access to this object before we get to a couple of centuries later a few centuries with its disappearance and that story i mean do we actually hear much else about the function of the ark when it is in jer Jerusalem and how significant an object it is. Is there much information on that? No. Essentially, once the Ark is installed in the Temple during this dedicatory

ceremony with Solomon, they stop talking about it. And this is why when you ask how significant was the Ark, at times it's the single most significant object in the possession of the Israelites. And then, curiously, it ceases to be mentioned, if we follow the biblical chronology, for the next 500 years, essentially. The entire period that there are kings, that there is a temple. There's no discussion of what's going on with the Ark. We have some manuscripts that mention, perhaps, that it was part of a coronation ceremony, but this is obscure. But we do have at least one text in the Book of Kings that makes a very clear affirmation for what its function is. It holds the tablets of stone that were given to Moses and nothing else,

which immediately makes us suspicious that people thought there was something else in that box. Because why else write a text like this, that in the box are only the tablets of stone and nothing else this appears in the book of kings so i know thomas rumer has written on this and others makes us extremely suspicious that in fact perhaps whether or not there was actually something else in this ark but at least people believed there was something else in the Ark. Now, what that could be, you can speculate. Romer thinks these were icons. These were representations of Yahweh. Maybe golden calves. That's a pretty good candidate.

We have a couple stories about that. Or maybe something else. But this biblical writer is trying to dissuade you, trying to say, no, no, no, it's just these law tablets. Other than the function, again, it's basically functioning like a statue. It's functioning like a divine statue, just as we see in all of these other temples around the Near East, which are actually designed in the same way as Solomon's temple. And they always have a statue in that innermost chamber, except Israel, you're not allowed

to have statues. Instead, they have this ark. You mentioned how we barely hear about it for those 500 years. What happens at the end of those 500 years? This is when the ark returns to the story almost. Yes. So Solomon has the ark installed in the temple in Jerusalem. We hear nothing about it, basically, for the entire history that is the Davidic monarchy in Jerusalem, until basically the aftermath of the Babylonian destruction. So, Nebuchadnezzar II brings his army to Judah, destroys the city of Jerusalem,

and burns the temple to the ground. Now, you'd expect at this moment to have at least some description of this quintessentially important object being taken by the Babylonian king. And in fact, we actually have several descriptions, both from the Babylonians and from the biblical material about exactly what Nebuchadnezzar is hauling out of the temple, and the Ark's not there. There's no mention of the Ark. And so, this raises the question of, well, is it even there in 586 BCE? And we're not sure. But we get the very last or the very latest reference to the Ark as far as we date biblical texts in the book of Jeremiah in chapter 3. Jeremiah is probably

written somewhat near the events surrounding 586. He probably parts of the story are eyewitness accounts, probably parts are written decades, maybe even a century later, but he's the last one to mention it. And in Jeremiah 3, what he says is he's kind of reflecting on whether or not the temple should be rebuilt and whether or not the ark should be built again. And the answer is no, we shouldn't reconstruct the ark. So that's important because already the ark's gone from Jeremiah's perspective. And there's also a sense that it's not a really great thing to have in a cult dedicated to Yahweh. In fact, the solution is that you don't need the Ark anymore because Jerusalem is God's throne. And that's an important theme

as well, which I maybe glossed over a bit, is that there are some texts that seem to understand that the Ark itself is a kind of throne of Yahweh or his footstool. And this is derived partly from an epithet that God has, which is, Yahweh, Lord of hosts, who sits enthroned on the cherubim, which people think and associate with that lid that has these cherubim on them. So when we finally hear about the Ark again after this 500-year kind of silence, it's just to say that it's no longer necessary. It's also quite interesting, isn't it?

Because there are many theories then as to the Ark being smuggled away and then some people now saying, oh, the Ark is here or elsewhere or elsewhere like that. It's interesting how Jeremiah, he's almost reflecting as if it's already gone. It may have already gone by that time as well. It is one of those great mysteries as to what actually happened to this object.

Yeah. And as you pointed out, there's no shortage of theories and hypotheses. And I shouldn't dismiss any of them because all are about as equally likely as the others. There's an Israeli biblical scholar named Menahem Haran who wrote an article devoted solely to pretty much every plausible moment that the Ark could have vanished. And he talks about basically from its installation in the temple by Solomon as kind of a terminus antiquem, and then just moving forward in time. And he suggests invasions by the Egyptian pharaoh Niko was one possibility. Invasion by Shoshank I.

This would have been just a few decades after its installation in the temple. And he goes down the list because there's quite a few opportunities for the Arkheb to have been taken. There's attacks by Assyrians. There's attacks by the northern kingdom of Israel in which goods from the temple are hauled out. And of course, then there's inner religious reforms. And we have two major reforms that are told to us from the biblical perspective, one being those of Hezekiah, kind of right at the end of the 8th century. And then another one, a more comprehensive one by a

king named Josiah, which happens around 620 BCE. And those are also major opportunities for the Ark to have vanished, because at a certain level, the way that they treat the Ark and the way they speak about the Ark is it's tiptoeing on the line of idolatry. And that's not surprising, because it's ultimately replacing these things that they expressly prohibit, which are statues and idols. So even the substitute, though, they're a bit uncomfortable with it. And I think that's why in Jeremiah, we hear that he says, it's no longer necessary because they're a bit uncomfortable with what the Ark represents. And it's not the only object that these reformist kings decide to remove. There's something called Nehushtan. This is a bronze snake stick statue that Moses had used to heal the afflicted

Israelites. So they seem to have had these iconographic representations in the temple in Jerusalem. And the Ark kind of being the grand poobah of them all might have become a target. But that's just the possibilities. Again, perhaps Nebuchadnezzar did take the Ark. He just didn't mention it. And the biblical writers didn't mention it either. But that's the possibilities. Again, perhaps Nebuchadnezzar did take the Ark. He just didn't mention it and the biblical writers didn't mention it either, but that's the mystery. It is a big mystery. I mean, a slightly controversial question, but I mean, if Jeremiah is also mentioning the Ark, even though it doesn't seem to be taken to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, can we be sure it was a real object? No, but we're kind of dealing with scales of probability there then. If it wasn't an

object, and all of these stories were completely fabricated, it does give rise to the question of what then would have been the centerpiece in the Temple of Solomon? Because the architecture's spot on exactly. It's called an Inantis Temple. We've seen them all over the Near East. We know exactly what it looks like, and we know what's normally in a Holy of Holies. So we would still expect something to be there. And the fact that they still identify an object that's actually a little problematic, ultimately, from the more strict monotheistic and iconic perspective, leads a lot of us to think whenever we have these kind of uncomfortable traditional memories,

we kind of think they're true, that there's a kernel of truth to them, because otherwise, why would you even come up with it in the first place if it's going to be a problem later on? So it's kind of in Indiana Jones's own words, it's a leap of faith in certain respects, if you believe that it existed or not. I'm personally inclined to believe that the traditions surrounding it, especially since the traditions emerge from really localized cult centers like Shiloh and this site called Kiryat Yerim, I'm inclined to believe it was a significant cultic object associated with Yahweh worship and its placement in the temple now that's a bit more of a question for me but i think the the original idea of the object i find fairly believable no and i'm i'm a similar opinion i have

to ask the question but i think in all probability i'm leaning towards there must have been something an ark there rather than it never existing at all it's just one of those fascinating cases where the archaeological evidence is lacking, so you do have to ask that question. However, as we hinted at earlier, thanks to the work of Finkelstein, Romer, and the team at a place like QF Karim, do we think it's likely that more archaeological evidence might be unearthed in the future that might reveal more about this object, that might add more validity to this idea that it exists and that it was at these places that I mentioned. What we're looking for is such

a small piece of the tradition that it's almost impossible that we're going to find that smoking gun. We're not going to find that Ark, but maybe we can find comparative evidence for the use of, let's say, ornate boxes to house divine objects. It would be really great to find it within the confines of Israel or the occupied territories to give us firm in situ evidence that in fact, these kinds of arcs, these kinds of boxes were used. And again, I think we shouldn't focus in on a singular object necessarily, but maybe this was part of a more widespread practice that there were quite a few arcs around. These were a way to represent a deity that you couldn't build a statue for in the conventional way. So again, anything's possible and we can be hopeful. It

might not be at Kiryat Yerarim specifically. As the site continues to be excavated, you never know exactly what you're going to find. Great to find some inscriptions. That would be a really, really helpful piece of evidence. But inscriptions are kind of few and far between in the land of Israel, unfortunately. But it's possible. Can I quickly ask, because this one is also quite prominent in news stories and literature today. There's quite a strong link between the Ark and Ethiopia. Now, what is the

story there? Right. So, this is what I talked about at the beginning, the reception history. And the reception history actually begins pretty early. So, we have these biblical narratives and the last biblical reference in Jeremiah. What happens even just a few centuries later is that people start wondering what happened to this thing. And the earliest reception history is actually, if you're a Catholic, a part of the Bible in 2 Maccabees. And this first story says that Jeremiah took it, he took it to the mountain where Moses is buried, and he hid it in a cave there. And so, this narrative would have been known to the rabbis, this narrative would have been known to Christian communitiesis. This narrative would have been known to Christian communities because that becomes a part of the Christian Bible. Second Maccabees is not a part of the Hebrew Bible, by the way, nor is it part of the Protestant Old Testament. So some of your

listeners may be familiar with this story, others not so much. So that's kind of the first reception history, the start of these legends about where it goes. But the one that you're speaking of, this Ethiopia connection, is a lot more complicated and in fact quite a bit later. So the Ethiopia tradition, it originates sometime in the 14th century CE or AD, and it's in a text called the Kebra Naga. So this is from a text in the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian Church, and it's a reinterpretation of the famous story of the Queen of Sheba's visit to King Solomon. So in the Ethiopian tradition, Sheba was Ethiopia. We tend to think of Ethiopia somewhere near Yemen, probably, we being historical critical scholars. But in any case,

in the Ethiopian tradition, Sheba was in Ethiopia. And their tradition and interpretation of that biblical story is that Sheba and Solomon had a son, Menelik. And essentially what happens is that he decides that he needs to return home to Sheba. And he enlists the services of the priest, one of the priests of the ark, who makes a copy. And he actually switches the ark out and brings the original back with him to Ethiopia, leaving a copy. And that's the copy that gets destroyed or vanishes. But the original Ark is brought back to Ethiopia to a place called Aksum. And today, actually, there's a chapel there where the priests claim that the original Ark is to be found.

And that's where that tradition derives from. It's a reinterpretation of that biblical story by medieval Christian scholars, essentially. I could ask more about that particular case, but actually I want to, before we completely wrap up, explore more of the wider legacy and something you picked up earlier there, Dylan, which was the fact that very early on after its disappearance, people start wondering, where did it go? disappearance people start wondering where did it go and that question of where did it go is it just amplified as time goes on first in antiquity then into the middle ages then all the way down even to the 20th and 21st centuries is that why this object is so ingrained in such in our memories

and the story is because that mystery that wonder of where it went is still and has always been quite big in the thoughts of many people. Yeah, exactly. It's why in the medieval period, scholars became obsessed and theologians became obsessed with collecting relics. It's a form of fetishism. It's this desire to hold, look, touch, this captivation by the consecrated object. And what's more consecrated than the Ark of the Covenant? Maybe the Christ, the original cross of Christ, but certainly it's in contention. And this desire is, it's not unique to religious icons, but certainly this one holds special precedence because of what it represents. And what it represents, again, is this physical terrestrial presence of God on earth, which

I think for, especially for Christian communities, but also for Jewish communities or any kind of monotheistic community, with the deity that's so far removed and so intangible, this was a more concrete focus of faith. And that's why it becomes really important in the medieval period. And it's the same reason that in the modern period, people go onto eBay and buy antiquities, this desire to touch, hold, feel something of the ancient world. And that's why it continues to captivate us, not only because of the stories associated with it, but the desire in people to kind of be part of that story as well.

And what's more being a part of that story if you end up holding or touching the Ark? Well, there you go. And Indiana Jones, I think that has also done quite a bit, hasn't it, in more recent history to kind of keep that idea, that interest in the Ark of the Covenant story very much alive. Of course. Yeah. What's more influential than Hollywood? Dylan, this has been absolutely fantastic and it just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today thank you well there you go there was dr dylan johnson talking all things the ark of the covenant the latest episode in our old testament mini series this june i hope you enjoyed today's episode

if you like more, well, why not listen to the other episodes in this series? We've got Dr. Irving Finkel talking about Noah and the flood myth and its Mesopotamian origins. But we also have Dylan on another episode where he explains all about Moses and the Exodus story. So definitely do check out those episodes too. If you're also looking for some more mystery then i might recommend dr islam issa's interview all about the library of alexandria which we published a few months back that was also a really really great episode definitely go and listen to those check those out in the ancients archive go listen on spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts last thing from me make sure that you are subscribed that you are following the podcast so Ancient's Archive, go listen on Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Last thing from me, make sure that you are subscribed, that you are following the podcast so that you don't miss out when we release new episodes twice every week. Now that's enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode.