As I understand it, the Ark was actually a large battery. Warriors would get “shocks” from God by touching it before a key battle.
One group in Texas attempted to recreate it using real gold, and they had to stop because of the danger. I might be wrong on this- it was a few years ago.
Battery technology was known to the ancient Egyptians, and Moses was from the ruling class. So there you go.
I don’t know, Steve. Sure, the battery theory is shown to work, if we believe TV documentaries and claims from people who have purportedly performed experiments - but AFAIK only if you built the Ark looking like how the 19th century Bibles and Indiana Jones showed it. I don’t know if it’d work if the Ark actually looked
like this or
this or
even this. The point? We don’t know what the Ark exactly looked like, so any purported theories which are highly dependent on the box being in a particular shape or form is to me questionable.
Besides, if we go by the Old Testament, no one is supposed to touch the Ark except the priests, and even then, only at the poles (absolutely no one can touch the box itself). Obviously the priests did not draw any weapons: they were present during battles, yes, but all the priests do is stand there and carry the Ark when the soldiers fought, with the Ark acting as a sort of
palladium (not the metal - this sort of sacred image or item believed to be the representation or the physical manifestation of a deity upon which the safety of a city or nation is said to depend). In fact, no one is supposed to even
see it: when the Ark is brought out into public view, it is always veiled. So if anybody’s getting a ‘shock’ (if there really was electricity in it), it’s the priests. But it ain’t really gonna do much.
Anyways, this theory to me smells like the attempt to ‘rationalize’ anything in the Bible that smacks of the supernatural. It’s the same idea behind those explanations like oh, Jesus never really multiplied the loaves or fishes but just somehow convinced everyone present to share their hoarded stashes of food or Jesus never really died on the cross but just fell into a swoon. I’ll be honest; I have more respect for people who simply dismiss these details as legends or exaggerations wholesale - at least I think they’re being consistent. Whereas the idea behind these rationalizations is something like: yeah, we believe Scripture is accurate (in the hyper-literal sense), but we don’t like all those supernatural stuff. It’s really a case of having the cake and then eating it.
Incidentally, there’s the idea that the golden Ark with the cherubs was just really a conflation of the gigantic golden cherubim and the more simple wooden chest within the sanctuary of Solomon’s temple; in fact, the Tabernacle itself is claimed to be simply a fusion of the tent sanctuaries of the ancient Israelites and certain elements of the temple of Solomon by postexilic writers (cf. the
documentary hypothesis - specifically the Priestly source). In other words, they’re all imaginary. I don’t endorse this idea, mind, but I’ll admit that I think that adherents of this idea are more consistent in their thinking by simply dismissing it wholesale than doing a lot of gymnastics to present Scripture as still ‘accurate’ while at the same time, outright certain aspects of it.
