The Ark Of The Covenant

[mwc]

I accept that when they wrote it, they believed the earth was flat, just as people thought the earth was flat before we discovered it wasn't. Should I debunk any history wrote that has a reference to the earth being flat?

 

Maybe the angels do roll the sun around, and maybe those windows do open to 'create' the wind

And so what is to be accepted from 1 Enoch?

 

You can state that they simply wrote what they knew but in the case of 1 Enoch they wrote supposedly based on seeing it in person. So it makes little difference that you mock the text that you keep pushing. This is called "talking out of both sides of your mouth." You tell me how great it supposedly is while trying to distract me from how bad it is at the same time. "This car is in cherry condition. Ignore the dents." Which is it?

 

mwc

[dagnarus]

I heard that the Israelis who are actually interested in rebuilding the temple are a fringe minority. The majority couldn't give two shits, and would rather not piss off the muslims over a piece of dirt. Given that I couldn't really see them getting up in arms about the ark of the covenant.

I was afraid this would take this sort of turn which is why I didn't want to entertain the crazy idea to begin with...

 

Maybe I should phrase it a little differently (a little more generically just to convey the idea)? If the religious folks over in Israel get the idea in their head that this ark is something to tie into their end-times eschatology (ie. the third temple and whatnot) then I could very well see that escalating into a situation that I described. It doesn't take much to whip people up into a frenzy and if the right people get into the right places (ie. look at the US when "W" got into power...the religious had his ear) then you can see what I was basically thinking.

 

mwc

 

Yeah but I think that Israel is far less religious than America. When I read the wikipedia article on religion in Israel it said that only about 65% of Jews believed in God. I'd have to think that would make it difficult to get a ground swell of support to go invade another completely unrelated country for a magic box. Iran can be considered to be in the secular interests of the country, Ethiopia can't.

[dagnarus]

Should I debunk any history wrote that has a reference to the earth being flat?

 

If that history claims that it's authority comes from divine revelations handed down from a supreme being (who would presumably know that the Earth wasn't flat having created it and all, Then again maybe he was on a bender over those 7 days and can't really remember what happened to clearly. That'd explain the platypus), then yes.

[dagnarus]

 

 

Same with the sling that David used, the jaw-bone of an ass that Sampson used, etc. "How interesting! Have you found Jesus?"

 

I say I think it will cause confusion because of the possible uproar of the Muslims and Jews. Of course, since the recent accepting of the Ethiopian Church by the Roman Catholics; revealing the Ark there would be interesting. I think it would be far more question opening than the two artifacts you mentioned. The Ark of the Covenant are both held in significance with the Islamic and Jews.

 

Christians, Jews, and Muslims would all be intense about this discovery; just because the Ten Commandments are supposedly in it, and according to the Ethiopian Patriarch, well preserved.

 

 

Which ten, Exodus 20 or Exodus 34?

 

 

Want to add that if these things are there, and preserved, and genuine; this would definitely in my mind change Christian logic and Theology.

 

I would have to wonder if the Ethiopian church, just as the Roman Catholics; would then become a strong accredit to Christ, having a genuine artifact, hypothetically, dated properly to an ancient time frame.

 

Would Christianity begin to see the other canon of the Bible as authoritative because this church, division, have such a significant artifact?

 

That getting back to my original thought. Roman Catholics have Peter, and the Ethiopian Orthodox would have The Ark of the Covenant of the God of Israel, one of the most sacred things in the Bible.

 

Would I be correct in my assumption that the real issue is not so much about the ark, but that you like certain non-canonical books which the Ethiopians hold and as such you would like them to become canonical due to the fact that Ethiopia has the ark of the covenant, there canon winning in some sort of divine my relic's bigger than your's pissing match?

 

Edit: Just out of curiosity if it turned out the Raellians have the Holy Grail, and the True cross, would that mean that Earth was seeded by space aliens? :Edit

 

What about the book of Enoch or whatever other books they have excites you so much?

[Abiyoyo]

 

 

You can state that they simply wrote what they knew but in the case of 1 Enoch they wrote supposedly based on seeing it in person. So it makes little difference that you mock the text that you keep pushing. This is called "talking out of both sides of your mouth." You tell me how great it supposedly is while trying to distract me from how bad it is at the same time. "This car is in cherry condition. Ignore the dents." Which is it?

 

mwc

 

Actually MWC, that is where you are not paying enough attention You see in this Op, it is about the Ark of the Covenant. I mentioned that the Ethiopian church used these books, and simply asked; if the Ark was legitimate,

would the theology change, because of the different canon's they use.

 

A simple, " No, I don't think they would; because they don't hold anything definitive to me"; that would've sufficed.

 

You are the only one that keeps insisting things as they are " the absurdities!"

[Abiyoyo]

 

 

Would I be correct in my assumption that the real issue is not so much about the ark, but that you like certain non-canonical books which the Ethiopians hold and as such you would like them to become canonical due to the fact that Ethiopia has the ark of the covenant, there canon winning in some sort of divine my relic's bigger than your's pissing match?

 

Edit: Just out of curiosity if it turned out the Raellians have the Holy Grail, and the True cross, would that mean that Earth was seeded by space aliens? :Edit

 

What about the book of Enoch or whatever other books they have excites you so much?

 

Reading past the sarcasm,...that is actually how I ran across it. I was studying the Conflicts of Adam and Eve couple years ago, then over to the Books of Enoch, then over to the Oriental/Ethiopian Orthodox Church, then read about the Ark, and last, started looking into all the theories of the Arks location.

[dagnarus]

 

 

Would I be correct in my assumption that the real issue is not so much about the ark, but that you like certain non-canonical books which the Ethiopians hold and as such you would like them to become canonical due to the fact that Ethiopia has the ark of the covenant, there canon winning in some sort of divine my relic's bigger than your's pissing match?

 

Edit: Just out of curiosity if it turned out the Raellians have the Holy Grail, and the True cross, would that mean that Earth was seeded by space aliens? :Edit

 

What about the book of Enoch or whatever other books they have excites you so much?

 

Reading past the sarcasm,...

 

While I admit I was being a bit tongue and cheek, I actually think my question was valid. If we're saying that being in possesion of certain religious artifacts somehow gives you dibs on being the one true faith then why not the Raellians. I'm assuming that you would agree that the Raellians are to be blunt "nuts" whether or not they have relics or not.

 

that is actually how I ran across it. I was studying the Conflicts of Adam and Eve couple years ago, then over to the Books of Enoch, then over to the Oriental/Ethiopian Orthodox Church, then read about the Ark, and last, started looking into all the theories of the Arks location.

 

This brings me back to my question, Do you think these books should be canon? and if so what about them excites you so much? Do you feel that reading them has somehow given you a deeper understanding of God, or some such?

 

And as an aside my take on the issue of changing the canon is this. If they suddenly decided that they could swap books into the canon now that would raise uncomfortable questions about how these books were determined to God breathed or not that Christians don't want to ask. After all if it　turned out the church fathers were incorrect in their determination of Enoch authority what about these other books? Maybe they were incorrect in the books they put in? Maybe they should use the Apocalypse of Peter instead of John, and so forth.

[mwc]

Actually MWC, that is where you are not paying enough attention You see in this Op, it is about the Ark of the Covenant. I mentioned that the Ethiopian church used these books, and simply asked; if the Ark was legitimate,

would the theology change, because of the different canon's they use.

You introduce the book in your OP:

2) This church holds non-canonical books as canonical, i.e. Book of Enoch.

Is it now your intention to now remove it from the realm of discussion? This book AND the concept of their theology are directly related. You know this and this is part of the point YOU were trying to make. Now you're backing away from that position while trying to say I have misunderstood you. As you recall I have asked YOU for clarification at least TWICE now in that I asked you to put forward your ideas rather than simply asking for, and then dismissing, everyone else's one the basis of some criteria you've not fully expressed.

 

But let's not forget that you further put forward in post #39:

That is just one side of things though. This church also uses some books in their Bible that is not canonized by the Protestant church, nor the Roman Catholics, such as the Books of Enoch. So, if they have a 'still glowing' Ark sitting in their church; I could see other avenues in doctrine opening up, as well as some workings and different focus on the Biblical structure.

Meaning? If this does NOT mean that people are to take anything away from 1 Enoch then what? You've put this into the conversation. A real ark would mean that texts like 1 Enoch will then be? Use your own words as a guide.

 

A simple, " No, I don't think they would; because they don't hold anything definitive to me"; that would've sufficed.

 

You are the only one that keeps insisting things as they are " the absurdities!"

And onto the misrepresentation (ie. effectively the straw-man). Why would I say this? Any of this? NO text related to any sort of "god" or "god-man" is authoritative to me. But that's beside the point now isn't it? You're making this very personal as to my belief system which is not relevant here. I'm asking YOU to back up YOUR position. YOU REFUSE. Why?

 

You've connected the ark being the real ark to 1 Enoch. YOU did this. Why? What doctrine(s) from 1 Enoch do you WANT people to take away from it? You CAN'T back away from this as it IS YOUR POSITION. The ark is simply the catalyst, or in movie terms the "macguffin," that you are using to get from one place to the next.

 

But the entirety of your post is simply that if the Ethopian Church is proved, via the ark, to be the one true church, then will the other churches, or xians in general, adopt their texts and doctrines? The ark? Just a plot point.

 

So what texts? What doctrines? What IS IT REALLY do you wish to discuss? Not the ark. So it must be the doctrines. What of them? What DO YOU WANT other xians to adopt? What DO YOU find valuable in them?

 

This is YOUR JOURNEY. Take US ALONG with you. If you aren't going to do that then don't get upset when we wander off to places you don't want to go.

 

mwc

[mwc]

So I found me a book..."The Quest for the Ark of the Covenant" by Stuart Munro-Hay (now deceased but unlike Cornuke an actual expert...and not just because I say so). As it so happens this book is about this very subject in this thread. Well, sort of.

 

I'll just quote a couple of things from the book:

Whoever first developed the idea that the Ark itself was at Aksum – and

the important thing is that someone did – it caught on. By the late 1500s or

so it was firmly in place among the ‘traditions’ of the Ethiopian church, and

was so recorded as the books were rewritten. The Ark’s presence in Ethiopia

is mentioned at this time in Sarsa Dengel’s chronicle, and by the Iberian

Jesuits. Strangely, none of the Portuguese who comment on it seem to have

noticed that the Ark was not part of the old Ethiopian ecclesiastical traditions

as reported by Alvares and others earlier, most of whom mentioned, instead,

the tablet(s) of Moses. [p.194]

Shifts are perceptible in the way Aksumite clerics refer to the mysterious

relic in the chapel. They tend to speak of the enda sellat, the chapel of the

tablet, and the sellata Muse, the tablet of Moses (the term used in the 19th

century, for example, in a note in the Lady Meux 4 manuscript of the History

of Hanna, and in Menelik II’s chronicle), not the tabota Seyon, the ‘Ark’ of

Zion, even though Patriarch Pawlos and qesis Kefyalew Merahi determinedly

maintain the formal claim that the Ark itself is at Aksum. With the Ark of

Aksum, we leave the scientific world of strict classification and method, and

find ourselves in the shifting mysterious realm of symbolism and faith.

 

A 1998 newspaper report offers some tantalising information about the

object at Aksum through interviews with previous guardians, and with the

nebura’ed:2

 

…There is some confusion about what precisely the monks are hiding

behind the faded red-velvet curtain over the doorway of the temple’s domed

sanctuary. Most people envision the ark as the large gold-covered chest with

two cherubim on top described in the Bible and depicted by Hollywood in

the Steven Spielberg movie ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’.

 

But in interviews in recent days, priests and monks who say they have seen

the relic denied that they have the heavy chest Moses is said to have built,

which they refer to as ‘the chair of the ark’.

 

Instead, they say their ark is a white stone tablet inscribed with the Ten

Commandments and kept in a shallow solid-gold case. They say that this

tablet was inscribed by God and carried down from Mount Sinai by Moses.

 

‘Yes, it is here, it is the original Ark of the Covenant, the one given to Moses,’

the chief priest of St. Mary of Zion Church, Nebura-ed Belai, said. ‘The chair

of the ark is not there.’

 

…In separate interviews, a monk who briefly guarded the ark in 1983 and a

retired head priest who said he had seen the relic twice described it as a

single tablet of white polished stone inscribed with the Ten Commandments

in Hebrew. They said the tablet is about 2 1/2 feet long and 1 1/2 inches

thick and is housed in a gold box three inches thick, with a hinged lid and no

designs

 

‘The man who stole the ark hid it in the small box only, not the big one,’ said

the Rev. Gebreab Maru, who was head priest at St. Mary of Zion for nearly

20 years before retiring in 1985. ‘It is true the larger box never came to

Ethiopia.’

 

The monks said the relic seemed to have paranormal powers. They said that

at night it sometimes appeared to give off light. They also said it was hard to

look at the tablet in daylight because it was so smooth and mirrorlike.

 

‘When I looked at it, it was completely difficult to understand it,’ the former

head priest said. ‘It makes me very afraid and my eyes filled with tears.’

 

A former guardian of the ark, Wolde Giorgis Wolde Gebrial, said: ‘It is like

a mirror, very smooth, not quite white. Sometimes it looks like water.’

 

This is intriguing. An Aksumite friend with intimate church connections whom

I asked about the nature of local belief replied that ‘with regard to the conception

of the people about the Ark, they believe that the sellat are exactly the tablets

mentioned in the Bible which were made by Moses and brought to God for

inscription at Mt. Sinai. A stone that glows and shines.’ The identification

ark = tablet(s) is automatic. I have also been told by a dabtara of Aksum the

same story about a tablet that emits light. If the reports from the witnesses

are accurate – when I spoke to the guardian and the nebura’ed Belai Marasa

in October 1997, the last thing they wanted was to go into detail about the

nature of the Ark, though we discussed many aspects of tabotat and ritual – the

story confirms that a sort of ‘super-tabot’ of white stone, much larger than a

normal tabot, but by no means as immense as Shihab al-Din implied, is kept

at Aksum. From the earlier reports, this is exactly what we might expect. [pp.195-196]

When the journalist writes that the nebura’ed said ‘it is the original Ark of

the Covenant, the one given to Moses’, we may be sure that what he actually

said was: ‘it is the original tabot (or tabota Seyon, tabota hegg, or even sellata

Muse), the one given to Moses’. One of these terms, with its interchangeable

significance, was translated to the journalist as ‘Ark of the Covenant’. In

Ethiopia uncertainty is intrinsic in the very words. According to this report, the

most eminent of Aksum’s clergy are able solemnly to declare that the Ark of the

Covenant was left behind, while the Ark of the Covenant inside it was put into

a new box and brought to Ethiopia. Bizarre as it seems, the concept nebura’ed

Belai was expressing is exactly in tune with the facts, based on what is in every

church: there was a tabot inside a manbara tabot, and only the tabot was taken.

The problem of interpretation lies in the fact that tabot can mean two things:

Ark of the Covenant; or altar tablet, tablet of Moses or tablet of the Law. True,

manbara tabot, ‘throne of the tabot’, does not usually mean Ark of the Covenant,

but the nebura’ed simply used the appropriate expression for the altar in which

any tabot is enclosed. Dealing in concepts based on Christianity rather than

on Jewish cult, he may also have subtly implied that what was taken was the

thing of most value: the tabot within the manbara tabot is the sole consecrated

item in the church. The Ark shrinks to insignificance, a mere ‘large box’,

while its contents, the white (single) stone, takes on all the numinous power

of the ancient palladium of the Israelites, and becomes itself the Ark. [p.197]

Moses’ Ark of the Covenant – if such an object were ever created in the

form portrayed in the biblical narrative – would today be well over three

thousand years old. Given certain particular physical conditions, the decayed

remains of a casket from the temple of Solomon could, perhaps, still lie

concealed, as Jewish legends assert, under the site of the temple at Jerusalem

– but it is far more probable that anything that once functioned as the Ark of

Israel long since perished. Of one thing we may be quite sure, perfectly in

accord with the Ethiopian reports cited above – the ‘chair of the Ark’, the

‘larger box’ or golden Ark of the Covenant of Moses, David and Solomon,

was never at Aksum. [p.208]

mwc