Aaagh! “help”, “help”, Aaagh!
Paging Brigham Young!
Sez you!
Well, unless the dingus can melt NAZIs or shoot laser beams, even if it could be proven genuine, it wouldn’t mean anything. That ancient Hebrews had a revered box into which they put revered stuff doesn’t exactly stir my atheist heart. Heck, I could sort-of buy all the non-miraculous aspects of the Book of Exodus re Moses (or some similar philosopher King) codifying Hebrew belief some 3400 years ago without dwelling on some larger meaning. I’m guessing a lot of people will be a little gladdened that hard evidence exists, but I don’t expect them to change their lives because of it.
But as soon as one NAZI melts, all bets are off.
Thinking about the above, it just doesn’t parse. If the author of the early Jewish writings wrote about a box which included a lot of gold in the construction, would not his contemporaries just scoff at him with “Hey dude, there just ain’t such an object. If there were, wouldn’t some of us have seen it?” rather than construct a box immediately to try and make the story true? After all, the text states that this box was publicly displayed.
And back to my original post, I never meant to suggest that if the Ark were found, athiests en masse would start believing in God, and lot of Hindus, Sikhs, whatever would change faiths. They’d just say “Oh, so someone actually found that box mentioned in the early Hebrew scriptures. Interesting. However, since this box exhibits no miraculous properties today, it is just a relic of Jewish folklore.” My point was:
“The Ark if found would be considered a sacred object by 3 different faiths, 2 of them quite prominent in the world today. That it currently was in possession by people of one of these faiths could be quite upsetting to some members of the other 2.”
The sticky part of the discovery would be how Jews/Christians/Muslims felt about it. Particularly in the sense some of those of the faith that didn’t possess it would find this troubling.
If you can endure a slight hijack – do modern Catholics, or any other Christians, still attach a lot of importance to holy relics? You know, saints’ bones, Christ’s foreskin, pieces of the True Cross?
Yep. Your example of the guys getting into a fist fight over the Shroud of Turin is an excellent example. There was never any particularly good reason for anyone to think it was real. First, there is no Biblical mention of such a shroud ever existing. If it had been seen at the time, one would expect that it would be notable enough to be worth writing about. Second, the shroud happens to pop up in the Middle Ages, at a time that trafficking in phony relics was well documented. Where is the record of people who had seen something as unusual as this in the many centuries before? And even the Roman Catholic Church never presented it as being 100% absolutely an authentic relic. They just thought of it as an interesting curiousity. People didn’t abandon Roman Catholicism in large numbers when it was proved a fake.
Now as for the Ark, both Jews, Christians and Muslims hold as a matter of the faith it did exist. If the Ark were found, and could be proven to be of the correct age for the true Ark, THAT would be a mighty sacred relic.
The lovely Northern Gothic Jesus doesn’t help sell its genuineness, either.
Naw, it’s the Babylonian Stargate to Nibiru that Bush is trying to access for Skull & Bones to establish contact with our Annunaki overlords!
DUH! 
At least 500 lb. of fragments from the Ark would appear in churches worldwide alongside the 2 tons of fragments and 4025 nails from the True Cross.
That does not preclude the existence of a sacred object, made by the Levite tribe in their pre-urban phase, winding up in the Temple when the Israelites become a unified kingdom, and then inserted into the national “origin story” about the mass exodus. It does not even prevent the ark, or the tabernacle, or the tablets, from being things that did travel across Sinai: it could be the case that though the bulk of the Israelite volk was autochtonous to the Jordan valley region (or as autochtonous as any ethnicity can be in that location), some group influential in their socioreligious development did embark on a migration from the general direction of Egypt – that was later on magnified and boostered into a Great Exodus when they got around to writing it.
It Belongs In A Museum!!!
Well, if history is any indication, if it’s placed in a museum with artifacts from idolatrous religions, it’ll cause them to fall down and be dismembered, and the curators will develop hemmorhoids until it’s returned to its rightful place.
I would think if the Ark were found it would be thought a museum just to house it would justified. It is just where this museum would located that would be politically controversial. How would Israel react if the Ark was found in Jordan, and was that museum was located in Jordan?
BTW, what today would be the rightful place? Assume that I am an archaeologist, and manage to find the Ark. And, that it is my desire to take the Ark to its rightful place. I can’t very well take it to the Temple in Jerusalem and leave it in the Holy of Holies, as the Temple is no longer there. What should I do with the thing?
I thought it was not lost- that a church in Ethiopia has it. As I recall, one person in that church is the safekeeper of it and the only person allowed to actually see it.
Of course there are. They are just called Islamic Militants now.
rwj
rfgdxm:
Once again going with Biblical history as a guide, it could be placed on a cart drawn by two oxen and let the oxen free to pull it without human guidance.
Otherwise, I suppose that some sort of tent could be set up in Jerusalem as an interim home for it (e.g., the dedicated museum you mentioned - but treated with respect due a sacred object rather than as a historical artifact for every curious person to lay eyes on) until a new Temple can be rebuilt. That’s what King David did.
True. Actually, I believe the safekeeper lives alone and can’t leave the place. He’s a sort of hermit.
But since, as you mentionned, nobody is allowed to approach the thing, it’s not like this claim is taken very seriously. There’s probably something in this church, but probably as real as the relics found all over Europe. At least, with the shroud of Turin, people can see it from time to time.
Art historical analysis of its style, which few would consider ‘science’ but which can, in some cases, be at least as accurate as scientific dating methods. In this particular case, they might be a problem about finding suitable objects for comparison…
Er, the clergy at Axum may claim that they have it, but the fact that no outsiders are allowed to see it means that all we have is their word for it. That might be enough to convince Graham Hancock; the rest of us would prefer a bit more evidence. And, as Roderick Grierson and Stuart Munro-Hay have argued, what evidence we do have is far from straightforward or unambiguous. It is not even obvious that the clergy at Axum do claim that they have it.