With school in full swing, I’ve been behind in writing and in catching up on the news. However, this morning I found a post on Blue Cord about Time’s recent article on the “finding” of the Ark of the Covenant. Blue Cord provides a good critique of the article, presenting some weak points in Time’s argument and approach to the issue. Blue Cord points out:
As with any decent story related to the Bible, Timeexhibites a good deal of ignorance concerning scholarship. In the second paragraph, they include this summary of scholarship:
Scholars debate [the ark of the covenant’s] current locale (if any): under the Sphinx? Beneath Jerusalem’s Temple Mount (or, to Muslims, the Noble Sanctuary)? In France? Near London’s Temple tube station?
No serious scholar I know has ever put forth any of these theories. It is only amateurs and treasure hunters with more imagination than evidence who support such ideas. Yet Parfitt cannot be classed with such dilettantes. In the 1980s, he isolated a link between the priestly lineage of the Jews and a tribe called the Lemba in Africa. The Lemba claimed to be a lost tribe of Israel, and genetic evidence suggests that there just may be a connection.
Parfitt claims that the ark of the covenant is somehow connected to a drum-like object called the ngoma lungunduthat the Lemba have. The article lists a number of similarities between the ngoma and the ark, including the facts that both are holy, both are carried on poles, and both emit fire against God’s enemies.1 The main problem, however, is that the article he found does not match biblical descriptions of the ark.
What Parfitt finds is a drum which he connects to the Ark, and this based upon the link he claims to have found between the Jews and the Lemba tribe in Africa. Blue Cord, I believe, rightly concludes:
The artifact he describes has only superficial connections with the ark of the covenant. Perhaps the Lemba are a branch of the tribe of Levi, and perhaps they built their own type of ark after fleeing from Jerusalem in 587 BCE. But the ngoma has so few similarities to the ark of the covenant that it is untenable to think that this tribe possessed the ark of the covenant at any point in their history.
So, it seems, we’re back at square one in regards to the actual location of the Ark, if it still exists at all. I’d love to hear from those who are knowledgeable on biblical archaeology on the recent scholarship and theories on the possible location of the Ark and this recent article from Times. What do you think?
HT: Calvin
Filed under: articles, blog highlight, theology | Tagged: Ark of the Covenant, Biblical archaeology, Parfitt, Time
I watched the Tudor Parfitt documentary, which was interesting but contained several flawed assumptions. Personally I am sure that the Ark of the Covenant still exists. If artefacts of wood and gold from the tomb of Tutankhamun have survived all these millenia and the parchments of the Dead Sea Scrolls likewise, then I see no reason to doubt that the Ark could also survive the passage of the ages. Nothing Parfitt said caused me to doubt the assertion of the Jewish philosopher Maimonides that during the reign of King Josiah, c.640-608 BC, the Ark was hidden away in a secret place deep within the bowels of the Temple Mount, a hiding place that according to some Jewish traditions had been prepared during the reign of King Solomon.