# So Where Is the Ark of the Covenant? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 16, 2002, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-where-is-the-ark-of-the-covenant/143003 "2002-12-16T02:59:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-where-is-the-ark-of-the-covenant/143003/41 "2002-12-17T22:52:05Z")
> [@](#): > > The ten commandments were copped from Hannurabi’s Code from the Sumerian/Mesopotamian creation of the world’s first city/state. > The myth of Moses and his tablets from the mountain is a theme that evolved to incorporate some of these laws into judeo/christian dogma. There are no tablets and no arc. Quite possible. But your post makes it a definite statement. Which means, as you should have been expecting: _ **Cite?** _ ---
**Author:** ![beajerry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@beajerry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beajerry)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 11:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-where-is-the-ark-of-the-covenant/143003/42 "2002-12-17T23:11:11Z")
You can read the code at [http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/CODE.HTM](http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/CODE.HTM) It’s in the language of merchants, which are whom made up the city-state. It’s no large leap to see how these laws were needed now that a bunch of people and incoming immigrants with their wares were conglomerating in one little fertile valley. As far as NoClueBoys post that this debate is “18th Century” and will never be solved, that is possibly true, but the more mythologies are shared (the more barriers to information fall), then the clearer it is where certain myths came from and their evolution revealed. I would refer those interested to books by Mircea Eliade, and most recently (this year in fact!) a great book by Tim Callahan- Secret Origins of the Bible. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 11:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-where-is-the-ark-of-the-covenant/143003/43 "2002-12-17T23:14:43Z")
Sounds like a good debate topic. I’ll open it up in a little bit, unless someone beats me to it. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-where-is-the-ark-of-the-covenant/143003/44 "2002-12-17T23:27:07Z")
Nice translation of the Code of Hammurabi. As you’ll note, Anu and Bea are called as witnesses/enforcers to the doing of justice under the code, but it is written as a series of penal provisions – not "Thou shalt not"s but “If someone does crime X, they are liable to punishment Y.” What irked me was the arrogant dismissal of centuries of tradition in your post: > [@](#): > > The myth of Moses and his tablets from the mountain is a theme that evolved to incorporate some of these laws into judeo/christian dogma. There are no tablets and no arc. I’m quite prepared to believe that the judgments of Hebrew judges and jurisconsults were ascribed to Moses the Lawgiver and to the God who was conceived as the ultimate source of all just law, well after the fact. However, I see no direct borrowing of the Ten Commandments (what one might expect to find in the Ark) from Hammurabi’s Code, though to be sure they are both Semitic formulations of Fertile Crescent legal conceptions. The Jewish and Christian dogmas came much later than the production of the code or codes that they make reference to. And it is quite possible, in fact probable, that the Jews of ca. 1000 BC carried about an object meeting the description of the Ark of the Covenant, whether or not it had a provenance in Sinai several hundred years previously, and whether or not it had two inscribed tablets inside that may or may not have been brought down from the mountain by Moses and may or may not have been carved by the finger of God. Make a reasonable argument for their having been derived from some other Near Eastern culture and I’ll be glad to listen. **Prove** to me that the Ark story was made up out of whole cloth by Zerubbabel after the Exile, and I’ll accept the proof. (I’m rather fond of pointing out the quite-recent explanation of the triplet Abraham/Isaac passing off wife as sister stories based on the custom explained on tablets from Ebla that the bride from another tribe was formally adopted as the heir’s sister so that the property of the tribe would remain within the tribe, and the tribe from which the bride had come would have no claim on it. What you did was to derisively dismiss some stories which happen to be from the Bible as total myth about things that never existed. That may be true – but it may not. Legends usually have historical referents, no matter how much accretes to them beyond what’s historically true. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-where-is-the-ark-of-the-covenant/143003/45 "2002-12-17T23:33:40Z")
I started a debate thread. [Here](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=151088) Perhaps that will save this this interesting thread from becoming a debate. ---
**Author:** ![beajerry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@beajerry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beajerry)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-where-is-the-ark-of-the-covenant/143003/46 "2002-12-17T23:43:03Z")
Can I have a fifty-year grant? All kidding aside, what you’re looking for are written proofs, which were few and far between in a world of oral traditions. That shoots this debate into academic myth theory. So, my proof that a code of laws is probably part of a congealed myth system and not tangible carvings by the hand of God? Well, that proof rests with those who say aliens exist. I don’t mean to be dismissive of this debate, but we’re dealing with laws of probabilities, and they’re on the side of mythology theory. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [December 17, 2002, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-where-is-the-ark-of-the-covenant/143003/47 "2002-12-17T23:55:18Z")
Whoops – law of the excluded middle popped up! Yeah, I agree that probability is on the side of theory of myth. But you missed my point that between Hammurabi, the Egyptian and Ugaritic codes, and probably a dozen more we are not aware of, there may be some common themes but predominantly separate descent – that King X codified the customary law of Beth Agag, King Y the law of Burpopolis, and King Z that of the land of the Grubbites, separately over a 150 year span, with only occasional borrowings and the similarities in the underlying customary law. I see a good dozen possibilities: [ul] [li]Israelites copped Hammurabi’s Code.[/li][li]Israelites copped somebody else’s codification.[/li][li]Israelites evolved a legal code, inspired by the Hammurabi and related codes, based on customary law.[/li][li]Israelites combined teachings of prophets with customary law to produce code.[/li][li]Israelites attributed code to YHWH as “head of state” and source of all law.[/li][li]Israelites merged four or five codes to get existing Torah code.[/li][li]Israelites got part of code from Moses, added to it with above attribution applying.[/li][li]Israelites got all of code from Moses.[/li][li]Israelites got all of code from YHWH dictating to Moses.[/li][li]As last item above, but with Ten Commandments in God’s Own Handwriting.[/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![beajerry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7bcc69/32.png) [@beajerry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beajerry)\ **Post date:** [December 18, 2002, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-where-is-the-ark-of-the-covenant/143003/48 "2002-12-18T00:32:23Z")
I see what you mean. I shouldn’t have said that the 10 C’s came from the Code of H without proof. The commandments could have come from numerous sources. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-where-is-the-ark-of-the-covenant/143003.md?page=2)