Did Second Temple contain Ark of Covenant?

[hu324b]

Its also mentioned in Jeremiah 3:16 - God took it from the minds and thoughts of the Israelite’s - never to be restored to them again - but i suppose this can be interpreted differently.

 

[patrick457]

Not sure about that…Somewhere I read (sorry no reference at the moment) that the alleged Ark in Ethiopia may actually be one of several copies that were made long ago.

I should add: the ‘Ark’ in Aksum is most likely not the box, but a Christian tabot.

The term tabot strictly implies a container for something: a chest or coffer. In the Ethiopian Bible, the term is used for both Noah’s Ark and the Ark of the Covenant (although the terms are different in the Hebrew: the Ark of the Covenant is an 'aron, a ‘chest’, while Noah’s boat is a tebah.) Where it gets confusing however is how the term is applied today: nowadays what is called tabot is actually the sellat, a wooden or stone slab found in every Ethiopian church that symbolically represents the Tablets of the Law and which is functionally similar to the Latin altar stone, the Syrian Orthodox thabilitho or the Coptic maqta. (One theory is that the slab tabot is derived from the maqta.)

What the term would have originally applied to is what is now known as manbara tabot ‘throne/seat of the tabot’. The more common type of manbara tabot today is a cupboard-like receptacle in which the tabot is housed; a rarer and older type (which is more accurate to the original meaning of the word) is that of a low, portable cube-like chest with legs, which would have originally been used as altars.

So, all in all, tabot can have the following meanings:

(1) A sellat: a wooden or stone slab upon which the Eucharist is celebrated, symbolically representing the Tablets of the Law
(2) A manbara tabot: either a cupboard-like stand or a small portable altar-chest, in which the sellat can be housed or laid
(3) The sellat and the manbara tabot together

It’s likely that the Ethiopian Ark in Aksum is actually a tabot: either a chest-like portable container/altar for the sellat (a manbara tabot) or a sellat. In other words, it is the Ark in the symbolic/liturgical sense (and a particularly revered one), but it is not the historical Ark.

 

[7_Sorrows]

In the Old Testament isn’t there a story of the Ark being transported and one of the men accidentally trips and touches the Ark and immediately dies? so how could someone steal it?

 

[patrick457]

In the Old Testament isn’t there a story of the Ark being transported and one of the men accidentally trips and touches the Ark and immediately dies? so how could someone steal it?

Uzzah the son of Abinadab (the guy in whose house the Ark stayed before David fetched it), yes.

Actually, it’s the oxen driving the cart where the Ark was laid that tripped (or something along those lines; the Hebrew verb can be interpreted a number of ways). 1 Chronicles implies that Uzzah was struck dead “because he put out his hand to the Ark” (‘al ’ăšer-šālaḥ yāḏō ‘al-hā’ārōn). The Hebrew text of 2 Samuel has a two-word phrase (‘al-haššal) often translated in many Bibles as “because he put out his hand to the Ark” (even though it’s not the same phrase as in 1 Chronicles) or “for his rashness/error/irreverence”, although its actual meaning is obscure. (It’s pretty much well known that the Hebrew text of Samuel is rather corrupt and difficult to decipher in places.) Now in the Greek text of 2 Samuel, this phrase ‘al-haššal is absent, and it’s not made entirely clear why God became angry and struck Uzzah dead.

 

[NHInsider]

Rev 11:19-12:6a Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple; and there were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail. And a great portent appeared in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; she was with child and she cried out in her pangs of birth, in anguish for delivery. And another portent appeared in heaven; behold, a great red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems upon his heads. His tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was about to bear a child, that he might devour her child when she brought it forth; she brought forth a male child, one who is to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, but her child was caught up to God and to his throne, and the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God,

The Ark of the Covenant contained an omer of manna (the Bread from Heaven), the stone tablets of the Decalogue (the Word of God) and Aaron’s rod that blossomed (the symbol of the High Priest). Mary carried the Lord Jesus in her womb - the Bread from Heaven, the Word of God, the perfect High Priest.

At the time of the Babylonia exile, Jeremiah removed the Ark from the Temple and hid it on Mount Nebo, knowing, as a true prophet, that the Temple would be destroyed (2 Macc. 2:4-8) At the same time, Ezekiel saw in vision the Glory of the Lord leaving Jerusalem (Ezekiel 11:23). The Old Covenant Ark was a sign of the Ark of the Age to Come. Mary is the True Ark as she contained in her womb Jesus who is the Bread, the Word and the High Priest.

 

[patrick457]

It’s likely that the Ethiopian Ark in Aksum is actually a tabot: either a chest-like portable container/altar for the sellat (a manbara tabot) or a sellat. In other words, it is the Ark in the symbolic/liturgical sense (and a particularly revered one), but it is not the historical Ark.

I should add: most of the sources from before the late 16th century - and even some afterwards - describe or imply the tabot of Aksum (the tabota Seyon, the “tabot of Zion”) as being a sort of tablet/slab made of stone rather than a wooden/golden box - which is what you’d expect the Ark to be.

It was sometimes claimed to be (one of) the tablets that Moses received, rather than the Ark of the Covenant itself. (Another version claims that it was a stone sent from Mount Zion - hence the name - by the apostles themselves.) In fact, no Ethiopian source from before the 16th-17th century describes the biblical Ark being in Ethiopia. In the earliest versions of the legend about Ebna Hakim (aka Menelik), the supposed son of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, only the tablet(s) were taken to Ethiopia; the Ark remained in Jerusalem. In fact, the tabota Seyon of Aksum wasn’t even such an important artifact at first: it isn’t mentioned in early Ethiopian sources. (It isn’t even the only tabota Seyon in existence. Tabotat, pretty much like altars in the Latin Rite, are dedicated to Our Lady or the saints. In other words, the Aksum tabot isn’t the only tabot dedicated to ‘Zion’ (Our Lady of Zion?))

It wasn’t really a big leap switching from ‘altar slab/stone’ to ‘Tablet(s) of the Law’ to ‘Ark of the Covenant’: as mentioned, the word tabot covers all of these meanings, and all of these are sort of conflated with each other theologically anyway. (Y’know, just like how the old Ark-tabot carried the presence of God, so does the altar slab-tabot carry the presence of God in the form of the Eucharist, etc.) So while the terminology used to refer to the artifact in Aksum remained the same (tabota Seyon), the definition of that term was confused and changed.

 

[AmbroseSJ]

patrick457:

I should add: most of the sources from before the late 16th century - and even some afterwards - describe or imply the tabot of Aksum (the tabota Seyon, the “tabot of Zion”) as being a sort of tablet/slab made of stone rather than a wooden/golden box - which is what you’d expect the Ark to be.

You mean because of Exodus 25 where it describes in detail how the ark should be built?